March 1, 2005

What's New in Bronzeville!

COMMENTARY:

African Centered Schools as Success Models in the Education of Black Children
By Taki S. Raton

I would like to first thank Raynard Hall and “Bronzecom” for including mention of my participation
in the February 19 Black Star forum at St. Paul and the Redeemer Church and the February 22 Channel 21 airing of our discussion “The Success of School Vouchers in the Education and Development of African American Children” on Ranoule Tatum’s “Talking Success.”

The poor performance issue of African American males in our nation’s public schools is by no means
new. But our leadership and the professional Black community in the arenas of education from K4 through the advance college degree have not successfully addressed this reality amid the fifty-year support of failed Brown v. Board school desegregation guidelines.

And as above noted, this problem with our children in public schools is not new. But as comedian
Bill Cosby often notes during his whirlwind national speaking tour, “Our children are crying, but no one is listening.”

What bothers me the most is that nationwide we have had models of academic excellence for our
children for over thirty years. But our Civil Rights leadership and African American traditionalist educators will not even look at these path blazers because these models are predominately if not all Black and for the most part African Centered. And of course we all know that according to the 1954 Brown v. Board decision, anything “all-Black” is “inherently inferior”.

But African Americans have taken the charge and have built superb Black schools and achievement
models for our beautiful Black pearls. Kansas City’s J.S. Chick and S.B. Ladd African Centered
elementary shules (School for Children) in 2003 received above norm competency testing results from the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). According to reports, the Chick African Centered school scores were approximately 300 percent above the state and district’s norm.

S.B. Ladd, the first court ordered African Centered school in the nation, met the national AYP
(Adequately Yearly Progress) goals of the “Leave No Child Behind” program in mathematics. Chick
and Ladd schools have been cited as two of the highest performing elementary public schools in the
entire state of Missouri.

According to an earlier study by Dr. Asa Hilliard, scholar and Professor of Education at Georgia
State University, the Marcus Garvey African Centered school in Los Angeles boast of students that at the age of three are reciting anatomy; the third graders are solving algebra problems and the fifth graders are learning trigonometry and calculus. At the time of this review, only three of the academy’s 33 teachers had college degrees. The Garvey school issued a standard challenge to the district citing that they will let any school pick the test, spot the participants two to three grade levels, and will still academically outdistance any area student – Black, White, or other.

In 1995, the Sankofa Shule opened in Lansing, Michigan. Under the cultural based African Centered
thrust, the school’s test scores from the standardized Metropolitan Achievement Test rose from 70% below the 50th percentile at the beginning of the first year of the school’s operation to 70% above the 50th percentile within three years.

Sankofa Shule was featured in the February 7, 1996 Wall Street Journal and hailed by the April 27,
1998 edition of the U.S. News and World Report as one of the “educational powerhouses of charter
schools” in the United States. Sixth, seventh and eighth graders participated in the Advance Placement Composition and Physics courses. Fifth graders were taking trigonometry and pre-school students were reading on the second and third grade levels. This African Centered shule outscored Lansing School District and State averages on the MEAP in math and writing.

In Milwaukee, the “bottom barrel” failing middle school Malcolm X Academy sparked major
academic achievement once the program began to operate under what was then called the African
Centered Education Immersion School Program. In an August 28, 1996 article, “Malcolm X students
achieve under African Centered thrust,” the then principal Kenneth C. Holt proudly poses with four of
his students who won bronze medals for their participation in that summer’s International Mathematics and Science Olympics sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

Earlier in that same year Malcolm X under the African Centered model won the championship
trophy for Milwaukee’s PBS Black Nouveau sponsored “Know Your History” quiz show and in August
of that year, the school took first place in the Milwaukee Public Schools’ Middle School Debate
Tournament.

Blyden Delany Academy, an African Centered school also in Milwaukee, is proud to announce
that during the 2003-04 academic year, we have had no student suspensions and expect none this year. Our 4th graders are already prepared to achieve above norm scores on the planned spring 4th Grade Competency Reading Test. The academy services children in grades K4 through 8th.

In 2001, one of our 7th graders won 1st Place in the City Wide Martin Luther King, Jr. Essay
Contest and a 2002 Blyden graduate attending an area public high school finished her sophomore and junior term in one year, ranks number 29 in this coming June graduating class of 130 and has already been accepted in Loyola University in Chicago and the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.
During her sophomore year, this student was selected to participate in the Milwaukee County
Youth Commissioner Program and additionally in 2004 was nominated to join the National Scholar’s
Program representing Wisconsin at the National Young Leaders Conference held last fall in
Washington, D.C.

This writer is also a member of the planning board for the September 05 opening in Milwaukee
of the Washington DuBois Leadership Academy, A Preparatory Boarding School for Boys. This
academy will enroll male students from grades 4th through 9th.

In a March 14, 2004 story on Blyden Delany Academy, writer Leonard Sykes headlines his
story “In seeking best education, some choose segregation.”

Sykes in his writing says that “It is particularly striking, as the country marks the 50th anniversary
of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision to end segregation in the nation’s public schools, that a national African Centered network of schools for Black children would exist that would challenge the very notion of integration as a goal.” The African Centered models are nationally available to us for duplication. In Chicago, for example, there is the Betty Shabazz International Charter School at 7823 South Ellis. I sent my son to this school’s former African Centered program, New Concept Development Center, when it was located at 7524 Cottage Grove. Blyden Delany Academy is modeled after New Concept.

The failure of our children, I contend, is no one’s fault or responsibility but our own. As
Black men and generally as Black people, we should not continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with
others outside of our culture and ask them what are we going to do to solve the problem of African
American children and specifically Black males in our public schools. We must cease talking and
build institutions modeled by the above national examples based on our own vision of highest order
excellence and presence. In these institutions, we must resurrect from historical obscurity clearly
defined achievement paths in all life arenas reflecting a glorious legacy of African World
accomplishments.

Only then can we restore for our children, as mirrored in our African Centered academies,
their rightful place on the world stage of time and accomplishment. They will then, as evidenced,
view achievement in school and in life as a goal to be proudly claimed.