IUR Interns at Work:

This will allow for our children’s instructional needs to be included in federal educational policy, and could later establish a wider pipeline of additional funding and resources to local communities on behalf of our urban students.’
-Jamila T. Thompson, Doctoral Student Urban Educational Leadership

(Highlights Quick Facts written by Ivory A. Toldson (2008) Breaking Barriers: Plotting the Path to Academic Success for School Age African-American Males. Washington D.C. Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc.)

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, THE 11TH CONGRESS AND THE FUTURE OF SCHOOL-AGE BLACK MALES

Presented by The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), Howard’s School of Education and the Open Society Institute Campaign’s for Black Male Achievement held in the Senate Caucus Room Russell Senate Office Building April 24, 2009

Parents, teachers, researchers, school activists and policymakers agree that current educational policies inherently neglect personal, social and emotional factors that contribute to academic achievement, particularly among African American males. Currently, less than half of black males who start high school graduate within four years, compared to 75 percent white male students. The presented study explored factors that statistically improve educational outcomes for African-American males by analyzing academic success indicators from four national surveys: Health Behavior in School-age Children (HBSC: N=1225), National Crime Victimization Survey: School Crime Supplement (NCVS-SCS: N=849), National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF: N=2497) and National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH: N=1208). The domain areas explored included personal and emotional factors and school factors. The findings will assist policymakers, educators, school advocates and families to plot a path to academic success for school-age African American males.

The major findings of this study include:

 Quality of life, as measured by how happy the student felt about his life, was the strongest emotional predictor of academic success among school-age black males. Academically successful African-American males were almost twice as likely to report feeling happy about the quality of their life when compared to those with failing grades.

 Feeling tired in the morning and feeling lonely were additional mental health factors that significantly impaired academic functioning among black male students.

 When estimating the impact of gender, findings suggest that African-American males’ academic success is more dependent upon emotional well-being than their female counterparts.

 When exploring the relationship between future plans and academic achievement, results indicated that black males who aspired to go to college were significantly more likely to perform better in school. The majority (61 percent) of the black male respondents wanted to go to college after graduation.

 Findings regarding nutrition indicated a statistical link between dietary practices and academic achievement across all races. Consumption of more healthy foods and less junk food was associated with higher academic achievement. Black students were more likely to eat junk food more frequently – and less likely to regularly eat healthy food – than Hispanic or white students.

 Eating raw vegetables was statistically associated with higher levels of academic achievement among black males.  High-achieving black male students reported significantly more positive interactions with classmates and less.

PERCEPTIONS OF STEREOTYPE THREAT IN THE WORKPLACE: THE EFFECT OF GENDER ON STEREOTYPE THREAT. Written By Christina A. Walker and Robert J. Smith, Ph.D. (Advisor), Department of Psychology, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD 21251

Stereotype threat is a social phenomenon that occurs when an individual encounters a negative stereotype about the perceived performance of their identifiable group. Race, gender, socioeconomic status, marital status and educational level are often cited as variables in the manipulation of stereotype threat across many scenarios (Sackett, Schmitt, Ellingson, & Karbin, 2001). In order to better understand the educational disparities that exist between Black and White students researchers have used the manipulation of stereotype threat to measure performance on diagnostic tests. Researchers have found that the presence of a stereotype threat (positive or negative) was enough to manipulate a subject’s performance and level of anxiety about perceived performance.

In the present study, 120 African American college students (60 males and 60 females) read a scenario about a person who had applied for a job at a company that had a professional context of either negative, positive stereotype threat or no stereotype threat information was given. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to rate their perceptions of how well they thought the applicant would perform on the job as well as how the applicant would be perceived by their fellow co-workers. The results were interpreted in the larger theoretical context of how stereotype threat affects expected performance as proposed by Ployhart, Ziegert, & McFarland (2003) and Spencer, Steele, & Quinn (1999).