For decades, researchers and policymakers have grappled with the issue of the underachievement of African American students. An age-old problem has been that these students on average lag behind their peers of other racial/ethnic groups in math, science, and reading. Recently, California, like some other states, has implemented a high-stakes standardized testing program that has revealed that when test scores are disaggregated along racial/ethnic lines, the scores of African American students continue to trail those of their peers. The study described in this book was undertaken in an effort to uncover schooling practices that are advantageous or detrimental to the achievement of African American students. The study was based on interviews and questionnaire results from nearly 300 African American high school seniors. Most of these students resided in a region that had a low college attendance rate and a high child poverty rate. The students were given an opportunity to discuss numerous issues pertaining to their schooling experiences, including teacher attitudes and expectations, the curriculum, homework practices, the quality of services provided by their high school counselors, racism at school, school safety, parental involvement, and their early reading habits and attitudes about reading. In addition to quantitative results, most chapters include detailed narratives describing the elementary and secondary schooling experiences of the interviewees.

The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about communicating across racial and ethnic divides and pursuing antiracism. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand dynamics of race and racial inequality in America.

Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists. Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

Grounded in the life experiences of children, youth, teachers, and caregivers, this book investigates how implicit bias affects multiracial kids in unforeseen ways. Drawing on critical mixed-race theory and developmental psychology, the authors employ radical listening to examine both how these children experience school and what schools can do to create more welcoming learning environments. They examine how the silencing of mixed-race experiences often creates a barrier to engaging in nuanced conversations about race and identity in the classroom, and how teachers are finding powerful ways to forge meaningful connections with their mixed-race students. This is a book written from the inside, integrating not only theory and research but also the authors’ own experiences negotiating race and racism for and with their mixed-race children. It is a timely and essential read not only because of our nation’s changing demographics, but also because of our racially hostile political climate. Book Features: Examination of the most contemporary issues that impact mixed-race children and youth, including the racialized violence with which our country is now reckoning.Guided exercises with relevant, action-oriented information for educators, parents, and caregivers in every chapter.Engaging storytelling that brings the school worlds of mixed-race children and youth to life.Interdisciplinary scholarship from social and developmental psychology, critical mixed-race studies, and education. Expansion of the typical Black/White binary to include mixed-race children from Asian American, Latinx, and Native American backgrounds.

Education, like electricity, needs a conduit, a teacher, through which to transmit its power-- i.e., the discovery and continuity of information, knowledge, wisdom, experience, and culture. Through the stories and experiences of eight successful teacher-transmitters, The Dreamkeepers keeps hope alive for educating young African Americans. --ReverAnd Jesse L. Jackson, president and founder, National Rainbow Coalition In this beautifully written book Ladson-Billings illustrates the inspiring influence of a select group of teachers who keep the dreams alive for African American students. ?Henry M. Levin, David Jacks professor of Higher Education, Stanford University Ladson-Billing's portraits, interwoven with personal reflections, challenge readers to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students but all children.

This book provides effective strategies that can be used to improve academic achievement and well-being of minority students. It examines, collectively, three cultural groups on themes related to diverse families, immigration issues, and teaching and learning. The book conceptualizes opportunities and challenges in working with minority children in the context of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It is a must-have reference for anyone who works with children.

Thompson designed an empirical study to gather feedback from African-American parents on numerous issues pertaining to their children's schooling experiences. The results, discussed in this book, can be utilized to improve the schooling experiences of African-American children nationwide. The African-American parents/guardians who participated in this study were biological parents in two-parent homes, single parents, grandparents, foster parents, and stepparents who were rearing school-age children. Some had been deterred from completing their own formal education as a result of peer pressure, temptation outside of school, or stressful circumstances. Others had positive schooling experiences and stable childhoods. Regardless of the differences in their background experiences, the majority of these parents or guardians were single-minded about wanting a better life for their children, believing that a good K-12 education and college education were crucial to their children's advancement. And while most believed resolutely in the hope offered by the public school system, they recognized that schools couldn't do it all. African-American parents and guardians are willing to work with teachers and administrators to ensure that their children receive a quality education. Yet if the historic achievement gap is ever to be eradicated, teachers, administrators, researchers, and policymakers must be more willing to view African-American parents/guardians as assets. African-American parents/guardians must be invited to verbalize their concerns, and those concerns must be taken seriously to effect meaningful and lasting change in the public school system.