What Does It Take to Be an African-American Male and a High Achieving Senior at an Urban Public High School
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Smith ScholarWorks Theses, Dissertations, and Projects 2009 Making hope and hard work matter : what does it take to be an African-American male and a high achieving senior at an urban public high school Lashauna Cutts Smith College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Cutts, Lashauna, "Making hope and hard work matter : what does it take to be an African-American male and a high achieving senior at an urban public high school" (2009). Masters Thesis, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/1185 This Masters Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations, and Projects by an authorized administrator of Smith ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lashauna Cutts Making Hope and Hard Work Matter: What Does It Take to Be African-American, Male, and a High-Achieving Senior at an Urban Public High School? ABSTRACT The purpose of this exploratory, flexible methods study was to understand how high-achieving urban African-American male high school students are able to excel despite environmental factors faced at school, home, and in their community. The research questions that guided this study are: (1) what impact do the school, peer, family, and community environments have on the resiliency of high-achieving Black male youth who attend a school in a high poverty area? (2) What relationships and support systems shape the behaviors, attitudes, and aspirations of African-American male students who reside in an urban environment? The sample pool was comprised of sixteen African-American/Black male students who were seniors at an inner-city public high school. Participation was in the form of focus groups where students responded to the researcher‟s open-ended, semi-structured questions and each other‟s comments regarding environmental factors that have significantly influenced their self-concept and academic achievement. Major findings were the following: (1) Participants believed that they possessed the cognitive ability and willpower to do well in school and in their future. (2) They recognized education as the key ingredient needed to become and remain socially empowered, prominent, and successful. (3) Youth attributed their resiliency, or ability to bounce back under adverse circumstances and achieve, to the positive, supportive, and structured relationships that they maintained with friends, school staff, family, and community members who verbalized and demonstrated their commitment to these youth. MAKING HOPE AND HARD WORK MATTER: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE AFRICAN-AMERICAN, MALE, AND A HIGH-ACHIEVING SENIOR AT AN URBAN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL? A project based upon an independent investigation, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work. Lashauna Cutts Smith College School for Social Work Northampton, Massachusetts 01063 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to the thousands of young African-American male students who are shining examples of success. When researchers decide to investigate about you all, oftentimes, your voices are muddled out, marginalized, and other-ed. May your voices be heard and recognized as powerful sources of knowledge, strength, and authenticity. This thesis could not have been accomplished without the assistance of many people whose contributions are gratefully acknowledged. First, I want to thank my phenomenal five brothers whose examples as committed members of their families and communities serve as reminders of how important it is to highlight the narratives of Black male youth. To the 16 African-American male youth who served as participants in this study, I am greatly indebted to you all for sharing your time, energy, and wisdom with me. Thank you for making this significant work possible. To my parents and other siblings, thank you for constantly believing in me and reminding me of my gravity and depth whenever I became discouraged. To my best friends, Kanika, Dana, and Alexis, thanks for helping me to navigate through this process. Your relationships truly helped me to endure and persevere. To Dr. Joanne Corbin, Dr. Ann Marie Garran, Verba Fanolis, LICSW, and Anthony Hill, LICSW, I could not have successfully completed this project without your help. Thanks for coupling your brilliance with your experiences to delivery wonderful teaching to me. Lastly, I want to thank my thesis advisor, Colette Duciaume-Wright. Thanks for your patience, thoughtfulness, appreciation, and edits of my project. Amen ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................. iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 II LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................................... 6 III METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................... 37 IV FINDINGS ........................................................................................................... 44 V DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................... 79 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 94 APPENDICES Appendix A: HSR Approval Letter... ........................................................................... 103 Appendix B: Informed Consent for Participants ......................................................... 104 Appendix C: Informed Consent for Guardian ............................................................. 106 Appendix D: Brief Demographics Questionnaire ........................................................ 108 Appendix E: Flyer........................................................................................................ 109 Appendix F: Resource List .......................................................................................... 110 Appendix G: Semi Structured Interview Protocol ....................................................... 111 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Forty-two percent of the U.S. public school population is comprised of students of color. African-American students comprise 17% of the public school student population. African-American males comprise 8.37% public school students; yet their representation in special education classes is nearly twice that number: 15% If an African-American child is placed in special education, 80% of the time the child will be male; 85% of the African-American children in special education are male. Only 3% of the students placed in gifted and talented programs are African- American students; of the 3%, only 3.54 % are male. Fewer than half of African-American males graduate from high school in four years after entering the 9th grade. African-American students are three times as likely as White students to drop out of school and twice as likely to be suspended. In many of our nation's cities, there are more African-American men in prison than in college. These gloomy statistics (Elementary and Secondary Civil Rights Survey, 2000; Kunjufu, 2000; US Department of Education, 2003, Whiting, 2006) are a part of what has come to be referred to as the “achievement gap”-the disparity between the academic performance of Black/African-American students and their White non-Hispanic counterparts. The gap is revealed in a variety or measures including students‟ grades, standardized-test scores, academic grouping and tracking records, dropout rates, and college enrollment and completion rates. The achievement gap is the theme of an abundant body of literature that exhaustively describes the social and academic problems facing young African- Americans. Whether culled quantitatively or through detailed ethnographic inquiries, the 1 bulk of the research focused on African-American students zeros in on the areas where these youth fall short. For African-American male students in particular, the typical take home message is that compared to all other students by gender and race, these males hold the position of number one in all of the negatives: they “consistently rank lowest in academic achievement, have the worst attendance records, are suspended and expelled the most often, are most likely to drop out of school, and most often fail to graduate from high school or earn a GED” (Wasunga & Christman, 2003, p.690). True, as a population “Black male students cluster at the bottom of the distribution of virtually every indicator of school failure” (Jordan & Cooper, 2003, p.198). Yet, given the hardship that many Black youth have to endure in school, in their communities, and in larger society, it is no surprise that their overall academic achievement mirrors the broad array of difficulties that confront them. The interplay of race and class has particular negative connotations for Blacks. African-Americans currently comprise nearly 13% of the total U.S. population and they overwhelmingly live in large urban areas (US Census Bureau, 2001). In fact, over one-half all Blacks reside in large cities. Thirty-four percent of all black children live in poor families. Put another way, that means that more than 1 in 4 African- Americans under