Aiming Higher Together: Strategizing Better Educational Outcomes for Boys and Young Men of Color

R A C E , E T H N I C I T Y , A N D G E N D E R R E S E A R C H R E P O R T Aiming Higher Together Strategizing Better Educational Outcomes for Boys and Young Men of Color Ronald F. Ferguson M AL C OLM W I EN E R C E N TER FOR S OC I A L POL I C Y A T TH E H A R VA R D K E NN ED Y SC H OOL May 2016 A B O U T T H E U R B A N I N S T I T U T E The nonprofit Urban Institute is dedicated to elevating the debate on social and economic policy. For nearly five decades, Urban scholars have conducted research and offered evidence-based solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities across a rapidly urbanizing world. Their objective research helps expand opportunities for all, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the effectiveness of the public sector. Copyright © May 2016. Urban Institute. Permission is granted for reproduction of this file, with attribution to the Urban Institute. Photo by Hill Street Studios/Getty Images. Contents Acknowledgments v Executive Summary vi Introduction 1 Achieving Person-Environment Fit 2 Skill Gaps to Close at All Parental Education Levels 4 About the Paper 8 Birth-to-5 Preparation 10 Beginning from Birth 10 Cognitive Disparities at Age 2 11 Gender Differences in Early Nurturance 12 Programming for Infants and Toddlers 13 Programming for Preschoolers 15 What Gaps in Kindergarten Readiness Predict 16 Quality and Fit in K–12 Classrooms 19 Measuring Teaching Quality 19 What Upper Elementary Students Say across 2,700 Classrooms 21 Teaching Quality in Upper Elementary 22 Concentrated Disadvantage and Misbehavior Grades Three to Five 27 Disparities in Secondary School Quality 31 Disparities in Respect outside the Classroom 34 Peer Pressures, Bad Behaviors, and Hidden Ambition 36 Disproportionality and Bias 45 Bias in Academic Placements 46 Tracking 46 Elementary Gifted and Talented 47 Special Education 48 Bias in School Discipline 50 Okonofua’s “Black Escalation Effect” 54 The Person-Environment Fit Predicament 57 How Schools Improve for Males of Color 61 Some Case Studies and their Commonalities 62 Evidence from a Districtwide Behavior-Change Strategy 66 Helping BYMOC Stay on Track after High School 67 Conclusion: Aiming Higher with Capacity and Will 69 Appendix A. Some Key Patterns in National Data 71 Notes 73 References 77 About the Author 83 Statement of Independence 84 Acknowledgments This report was funded by the Urban Institute. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders or to the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University. Further information on the Urban Institute’s funding principles is available at www.urban.org/support. I wish to thank Margaret Simms for commissioning me to write the paper and then patiently providing feedback as the work progressed. Let me also express my gratitude to Nan Marie Astone, Matt Chingos, Nate Fosse, Jocelyn Friedlander, and Sarah Phillips. Along with Margaret, they all helped improve the paper and none shares responsibility for any remaining shortcomings. Finally, I thank the talented editors and others on the Urban Institute communications department who worked overtime to prepare the paper for publication. VI E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y Executive Summary Aiming Higher Together concerns what we can do as a society to overcome the systemic predicament facing boys and young men of color (BYMOC), young males who are identified or self-identify as blacks, Latinos, or Native Americans, in US schools. Their unique predicament is a complex web of circumstances for which no individual is to blame and that no one person can unravel. Across the nation, it helps produce a familiar pattern: whether Native Americans in Arizona, Latinos in Texas, or blacks in Illinois, BYMOC are underrepresented among youth who excel in school and overrepresented among those with low grades, low test scores, and disciplinary problems. Individual BYMOC with ample resources or great determination can escape or avoid the predicament to various degrees, but none can dismantle it. Dismantling it requires the type of social movement that President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative is intended to inspire. The paper argues that efforts to dismantle the predicament should begin at birth. Evidence from the nationally representative Early-Childhood Longitudinal Study shows that, on average, BYMOC at each parental education level lag their peers in cognitive skills by age 2. Three years later, skill gaps measured at the beginning of kindergarten predict all of the racial difference in special education placements by fifth grade. Studies cited in the paper found race and gender differences in home-based learning activities in early childhood and indicate promising ways that communities can work with parents and other caregivers to help level the playing field beginning from birth. Policy supports su