By TaRessa Stovall

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”

This is the question posed by a white male high school teacher to his “virtually all African-American” 12th grade English class, where not a single student raised their hand when asked if they have a father living at home.

Patrick Welsh, a teacher in what he described as “the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T. C. Williams” High School in the Washington, DC suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, shared this incident in a column he wrote for the October 18 issue of The Washington Post, titled Making the Grade Isn’t About Race. It’s About Parents.

Welsh describes the moment when he concluded that it is the presence of a father in the home, rather than race alone, that is behind the nation’s so-called minority achievement gap. “I was stunned. These were good kids; I had grown attached to them over the school year. It hit me that these students … understood what I knew too well: The lack of a father in the home had undermined their education.”

He shared the example of achiever Yasir Hussein, a former student now studying engineering at Virginia Tech whose parents had emigrated from Sudan. When Hussein earned a 3.5 grade-point average in high school, his friends congratulated him. However, his parents “had the opposite reaction. They took my PlayStation and TV out of my bedroom and told me I could do better.’”

While Welsh wrote that Yasir was motivated to get good grades because his parents worked hard to give him the chance to get an education in America, he didn’t ground the comparison of immigrant black students with African Americans in any historical context. I can’t imagine that significant numbers of American children of any race are motivated to high academic achievement simply by the chance to “get an education” in their own country, where education is considered a right, not a privilege, available even to those who are residing here outside of the law.

He cites reports from other parts of the country “decrying the gap,” writing that, “Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom.

Welsh doesn’t take into account the many African-American students at all grade levels who are doing just fine, or those who routinely excel. Nor does he factor in the many single mothers who are super-involved in their children’s education, or the fathers who live in the home but for whatever reason, are not involved.

Welsh’s frustration at what he describes as an entire class “doing horribly” on a test is understandable. His premise, that “…focusing on a ‘racial achievement gap’ is too simple; it’s a gap in familial support and involvement, too,” loses strength by painting students with too-broad brushstrokes, and ignoring the contexts that put these issues into focus.

While Welsh writes convincingly that “I am eager to find ways to help my students,” he might consider a little extra-curricular homework into the many complex aspects of black learning and achievement.

Urban education expert Pedro Noguera writes in his recent book, The Trouble with Black Boys…And Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education, that,

“The complexity surrounding the relationships between race and achievement is particularly evident when we consider what appears to be a paradox in the performance of two broad categories of students; recent immigrants and middle-class black and Latino students. Several studies reveal that immigrant students of color, many of whom are from low-income families, are often academically successful. In contrast, many middle-class black and Latino students tend to be less successful even though their families are relatively privileged. While several factors directly and indirectly influence these patterns, it is my contention that both phenomena are largely related to the ways in which identities related to race and gender are constructed in school settings and to perceptions and expectations that develop among adults and students in response to these perceived identities.”

Also noteworthy are stories of schools that elect to focus on proactive problem-solving. Harlem kindergartners visit a farm as part of a field “study”—not field trip—to provide an experiential dip into a rural environment so they can better comprehend and perform on standardized tests. The students, from the Harlem Success Academy, a chain of four charter schools described in an October 20 front-page New York Times article as being “known for a relentless emphasis on data,” visit the Queens County Farm Museum each year so they can better answer questions about the number of corn stalks in a cornfield. This story does not mention the number of parents in the students’ homes, or the pressure to get good grades.

Welsh’s revelation and the Harlem Success Academy’s innovation are part of the conundrum surrounding black K-12 achievement throughout the nation. As with other situations regarding race in America, the concept of level playing fields and the mysteries of who achieves and why are best addressed through a nuanced, thoughtful approach that eschews an either/or perspective for the more realistic and inclusive “and.”

His conclusion that his less motivated students aren’t achieving because, “Their parents just weren’t there for them—at least not in the same way that parents of kids who were doing well tended to be,” is neither supported nor challenged, as he provides no data on GPAs, test scores, probability of graduation or college aspirations of these students. We are left to rely mostly upon the anecdotes he shares and the conclusions he draws from them. [Note: Welsh did not respond to repeated telephone or e-mail requests to be interviewed for this article.]

To further support his parental dynamic thesis, Welsh writes of Junior Bailey, a senior in his Advanced Placement English class, whose father, an alum of the high school, attended parents’ night. His father “’has always been hard on me; it’s been hard to get away with much,” Junior said, adding that few of his friends have fathers living with them and “’they don’t get any push’” from their mothers, who “’are soft on them.’”

A wider look at the issue of black student achievement provides a different perspective.

Noguera, professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, writes that “A large body of research has shown that when students are labeled and sorted into groups on the basis of their academic ability or behavior (that is, as troublemakers or underachievers), the behaviors that were ostensibly targeted for treatment are often reinforced instead of being ameliorated. This is because such practices almost always lead to lowered expectations on the part of the adults assigned to teach them. Even more insidious, those who are labeled often internalize the labels assigned to them.”

Noguera goes on to state that, “Fortunately, there is considerable evidence that the vast majority of black students … would like to do well in school. In addition, there are schools where academic success for black students is the norm and not the exception. … There are schools where African-American … students do well and where high levels of achievement are common. Researchers who have studied effective schools have found … the following characteristics:

1. a clear sense of purpose
2. core standards within a rigorous curriculum
3. high expectations
4. commitment to educate all students
5. a safe and orderly learning environment
6. strong partnerships with parents, and
7. a problem-solving attitude.

Noguera adds that, “If students do not believe that their teachers care about them and are actively concerned about their academic performance, the likelihood that they will succeed is greatly reduced.”

The students in the Harlem Success Academy likely have a sense that their teachers care about and are actively concerned about their academic performance. I imagine that Welsh’s students might have that sense as well. Still, his eagerness to eschew race in favor of the number of parents in the home runs the risk of relegating the “it takes a village” approach to a single dimension.

Regarding Welsh’s Washington Post column, Amy Carlini, Executive Director, Alexandria City Public Schools, told TheDefendersOnline that, “It’s a good discussion. Parent involvement is a big component of student success, but you can’t discount how important it is for teachers to truly believe that each and every child can achieve at high levels. We feel like every child that walks through our doors, we need to support those children and we need to believe in those children, no matter what their circumstances are, so it’s a little bit of everything. There are just so many factors.”

Rather than relying upon the apples-and-coconut comparison of African-American and black immigrant students, or assuming that children from single-parent homes are automatically neglected academically and doomed to low achievement, the multi-faceted issues of race, student motivation and attainment are best addressed by a nuanced, demographically-specific and multi-faceted approach, such as that utilized by the Harlem Success Academy.

Just as teachers in some rural school districts are taking students on field trips to major cities to learn what a lawn is, or an escalator, leaders of the Harlem Success Academy are providing their students with a sensory-rich lesson designed to familiarize them with concepts outside of their environment. The New York Times article shares such revelatory moments as one student realizing that pumpkins have seeds, another learning that bacon comes from pigs, and a third noting that “’Chickens make eggs. I didn’t know that before.’”

No matter how many parents are in the home, or pressuring students to get good grades, there is simply no substitute for that kind of educational impact. Perhaps rather than asking African-American students why they don’t “study like the kids from Africa,” we can, as Noguera outlines, and the Harlem Success Academy demonstrates, apply what we know of best practices across the board. Maybe that way we can narrow all the gaps, including those between a kindergartner recognizing the source of eggs, and 12th grade English students—and their teacher—realizing that the drive to succeed is most powerful when, regardless of nationality, culture of family structure, it originates from within and is consistently nurtured from as many external sources as possible.

TaRessa Stovall is Managing Editor of TheDefendersOnline.