Black Students

WASHINGTON -- Do African immigrants make the smartest Americans? The question may sound outlandish, but if you were judging by statistics alone, you could find plenty of evidence to back it up. In a side-by-side comparison of 2000 census data by sociologists including John R. Logan at the State University of New York, Albany, black immigrants from Africa averaged the highest educational attainment of any population group in the country, including whites...

Not so long ago, a New Town athlete - an honor roll student, no less - nearly lost a chance at a full, four-year college athletic scholarship because his SAT scores came up six points short of admission standards. That near-calamity was enough to prod Rolanda Chambers to do something to help ensure that other bright athletes didn't get tripped up just short of the goal line because of a poor performance on a test. Chambers, the president of the Owings Mills high school's Parent Teacher Student Association, helped organize an SAT preparatory course for some of the school's athletes.

Rebecca E. Carroll, retired city schools deputy superintendent who wrote eloquently about segregated Baltimore and racism, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 81 and was a resident of Morgan Park in Northeast Baltimore.Born in Baltimore, she began her career as an elementary school teacher and ended it as the second-in-command of the entire system. She was offered the superintendent's post but declined and chose retirement in 1981.Over the years, she also was principal of two elementary schools, an area supervisor, area director and assistant superintendent before she became deputy superintendent.

MY GREAT-grandfather John Wesley Staples (1865-1940) was vain about writing and scribbled even grocery lists theatrically, gesturing grandly with the pencil and pausing between words to lick its point.A fuss over a shopping list seems ridiculous -- until you consider that he was born in the slaveholding South, where educating black people was illegal until after the Civil War, and where aggressively literate blacks were seen as subversive and even dangerous well into this century.Modern writing on the role of race in academic achievement generally discounts this history.

ME AND MY BIG mouth.There I was, the guest speaker at the induction ceremony of Randallstown High School's National Honor Society (the Bertrand Russell Chapter) when I asked why the media weren't covering the event."We cover high school athletics," I said. "Why don't we cover students who achieve academically?"After the speech, the parents of one student called me on it. Yeah, they said in essence, why the hell don't you cover it?I hadn't meant me, personally, of course. I was referring to the local television stations and radio and all those other media outlets.

COLLEGE PARK -- Maryland's political, educational and business leaders vowed yesterday to take whatever steps are necessary to correct the state's continuing gap in academic performance between black students and white students."

With $500,000 set aside to improve minority students' achievement, a Baltimore County task force has drafted recommendations ranging from more help in reading and math for fourth- and fifth-graders to additional diversity training for teachers and administrators.The task force's work comes as the school system's African American Advisory Group plans to hold a series of town meetings across the county tomorrow night to let parents and community members talk about the plight of black students in Baltimore County.

SURRY, Va. -- The walls have been knocked down. The bricks crushed and swept away. Only grass and a spot of asphalt remain.Brenda Hill noticed the spot immediately. She was driving down Highway 31 on her way to the hairdresser. She couldn't believe the one-story brick building she'd sat in front of and where sheid chatted with friends was gone.The spot was so barren, it looked as though nothing had ever been there, as though L.P. Jackson High School had never existed.Hill, who works at the Peninsula Health Department in Newport News, had attended L.P. Jackson from eighth to 11th grade.

IN THE old days of sincere and earnest, but ultimately naive, attempts to crack racism, when the issues were black and white and seemed clearer, when the good guys were in the North and the bad white guys in the South, I was majoring in journalism at Ohio State University.I recall those days and those efforts in light of the state of race relations today and 40 years after the Supreme Court decision striking down officially segregated public schools, the subsequent furor over desegregation, job bias and housing discrimination.

MARYLAND has made more progress than virtually any other Southern state in expanding opportunities in higher education for African-American students. State leaders are committed to developing a comprehensive plan that provides opportunities and ensures academic excellence for all students.Maryland's emphasis on accountability in our schools has resulted in more students from all backgrounds getting the quality education they need for success in college and the workplace. And the state's scholarship programs have created a pathway to higher education for more of our young people.

While SAT scores in Maryland remained relatively stable, the number of students taking and passing an Advanced Placement exam rose significantly this past school year, reflecting a national trend in the use of the rigorous high school exams. In the data released Tuesday by the College Board, African-Americans showed progress on both tests. Although they represent only 16 percent of all the students taking AP tests in Maryland, there was a 10 percent increase in their participation over one school year.

African-American students are falling further behind their peers at state universities, according to data released yesterday that show a widening gap in graduation rates despite efforts to close it. The state university system reported that 40 percent of black students earn a degree within six years of entering college, compared with 65 percent of all students. That 25-point gap is a significant increase over three years ago, when the gap was 15 percentage points. Officials said the system is enrolling thousands more African-American students, and particularly more lower-income students who often have to drop out for financial reasons.

The participation rate among Anne Arundel County public school students on the PSAT and scores on the SAT and AP exams declined slightly in the 2007-2008 school year, though the school system made some gains in participation rates among black students in more advanced course work and college-entry exams, according to school department figures released this week. The average SAT score declined 12 points during the past three years among seniors, and the percentage of students passing Advanced Placement tests fell 8 percent in the 2007-08 school year from the previous year.

Black students in Anne Arundel County schools are doing better in reading, English and math, but they still get punished more frequently and get placed into special education at a higher rate than their majority peers, according to school officials. A progress report released Thursday comes three years after a landmark mediation agreement was reached between Anne Arundel County schools and black advocacy groups to tackle those problems. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the parties in the mediation agreement, viewed the positive results in the report with skepticism and lamented the lack of progress in other areas.

Under pressure to reduce the suspension rate of black students, Anne Arundel County is making progress by training staff in how to work with people of different backgrounds and giving troublesome students more support. Experts say such training is a key to keeping African-American students throughout Maryland in school. Last year, 13.9 percent of black children were suspended statewide, compared with 5.8 percent of white kids. Studies have linked suspensions and expulsions to lower academic achievement and higher dropout rates.

As a third-grader, Adejire Bademosi didn't hesitate to contact then-Superintendent John R. O'Rourke with concerns about the suspension rates of her fellow students. In middle school, she approached state Sen. Allan H. Kittleman about the dangers of Internet predators. That overture resulted in her speaking to teachers throughout the county during Internet safety training sessions. And Kittleman introduced legislation dealing with the issue during the recent General Assembly session. As the newly elected student member of the Howard County Board of Education, the 16-year-old sophomore at Marriotts Ridge High School hopes to continue to have her voice heard by adults.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was dead, Baltimore was ablaze and four teens at Loyola Blakefield High School responded with their version of rebellion. They began asserting their racial identity, challenging authority and reading militant authors. They grew Afros. In the days and months after King's murder 40 years ago today, consciousness spread nationwide as the word black replaced Negro and clenched fists were raised with pride. But the elite Jesuit school in Towson was caught off guard by the assault on its dress code.

The new Frank Hebron-Harman Elementary School bears the name of the man who attended, taught at, then led the school for the community's black students. Since the $18 million building opened last spring in Hanover, however, his survivors have wondered if the schoolchildren inside know enough about the man who guided their predecessors through decades of segregation. Hebron's relatives, who led the effort to have the school named for Hebron, commissioned a mural about the school's heritage, and it will be unveiled today in the lobby, for all to see every day. "We wanted a lasting memorial for the children," said niece Patricia Hebron-Handy.

WASHINGTON -- Under pointed questioning from Democratic House members who decried the lack of federal intervention in the racially charged Jena 6 case, U.S. Justice Department officials revealed yesterday that they are weighing an investigation into allegations of systemic racial bias in the administration of justice in the small, mostly white Louisiana town. U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington also said for the first time that the hanging of nooses from a shade tree in the Jena High School courtyard in September 2006 by three white students - a warning directed at black students to stay away from the tree, which triggered interracial fights in the town - constituted a federal hate crime, but that federal authorities chose not to prosecute the case because of the ages of the white youths involved.

Suitland -- Pointing to statistics that black students are three times more likely than whites to be expelled from school, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson urged Suitland High School students yesterday to commit to school. "We have no control over our date of birth or our race or our gender," Jackson said at the school, whose student body is 97 percent black. "But we have control over the choices we make." Recalling the fight by black children to integrate white schools in then-segregated Little Rock, Ark., Jackson castigated students today who skip school or drop out altogether.