The Black Sonrise: Oakland Unified School District's Commitment to Address and Eliminate Institutionalized Racism

• In Event: 58.080 - Expanding Educational Opportunities for Black and Latino Male Students: Lessons From Four Urban School Districts

Abstract

Objectives
African American male students face a host of challenges in America’s public schools: disproportionate discipline and drop-out rates, few teachers that relate to their experiences, lack of care, and psycho-social challenges in terms of their identity development (Ferguson, 2000; Howard, 2013; Nasir, 2012; Noguera, 2008). The racialized and gendered experience of young Black boys in schools have, in many ways, put them at odds with these very institutions of learning. Therefore, on a collective level, these young men have experienced school as a site of “Black suffering” (Dumas, 2014). Generation after generation, Black families send their children to school; but the ideals of an oasis of learning are too often met with the realities of institutionalized racism, low expectations, and marginalization. As a student in Oakland discloses, “Since fourth grade…my teachers have called me dumb to my face.”

The Black Sonrise provides empirical data on innovative ways to reach and teach African American male students in ways that engage, encourage, and empower.
In particular, this research explores how the Office of African American Male Achievement (AAMA) in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has been a district and community effort to create positive educational spaces for African American boys since 2010. Over the last four years, AAMA has developed the Manhood Development course sequence for elementary, middle, and high school students. These courses are taught exclusively by Black males for Black males. Given the program’s success, it is now operating in 17 schools throughout the district and serves 16% of the African American male student population.

Results
This panel presentation will provide qualitative and quantitative examples of a pedagogy of brotherhood that transformed the schooling experience for Black males in OUSD. Over the course of the initiative, African American male student achievement has steadily increased by 5% in all of their courses; during 2015-2016, 31.7% of African American students were on the honor roll. Reading levels, as measured by the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) test, increased by 22.8% for AAMA treatment students between 2012-2016. Similarly, when the program began, only 15.2 students were reading at grade level. The rate has increased to 23.4% during 2015-16. In the 2010-2011 school year, the Cohort Graduation Rate for African American male students was 46.9%. In the 2014-15 school year the cohort graduation rate jumped to 59.7%. The suspension rate for African American males has been more than cut in half. It is through the student and teacher interviews, participant observation, and examination of the rigorous curriculum that a sustainable, radical and replicable model for youth of color emerges.
Significance
While conversations are occurring on a national level about what is to be done to help Black males achieve, much of it is decontextualized from historical perspectives and a critical analysis of what it means to navigate today’s schools as Black boys. This study seeks to provide parents, educators, and scholars working to create supportive structures in schools for Black male students with a case study that offers insight on how to engage this work effectively.

Author

• Vajra M. Watson, University of California - Davis