Tim Abram is the Associate Policy Director of Educational Opportunity for ExcelinEd.
February is Black History Month. Most people do not know that the concept of Black History Month originated with Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Black History Week. Fewer people have read Carter’s 1933 seminal work, The Mis-Education of the Negro. In it, Carter proclaims, “How we have arrived at the present state of affairs can be understood only by studying the forces effective in the development of Negro education since it was systemically undertaken immediately after Emancipation.”
With that in mind, ExcelinEd launched the State of the Black Education with the goal to examine the academic performance of Black students in states where Black students make 25% or more of the total K-12 population. Why 25 percent? The underperformance of Black students has a greater impact on a state’s overall educational performance compared to states with fewer Black K-12 students.
To date we have looked at Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee, and the data repeatedly show the importance of early literacy skills in each state. Educators know that reading proficiently by the end of third grade dramatically alters a student’s trajectory from that of potential dropout to becoming a high school graduate. Earning a high school diploma adds roughly $400,000 of lifetime earnings for a graduate, compared to someone who does not complete high school.
This is significant given the potential role that educational achievement can have in closing the long-standing wealth inequality gap between Black and White families. For example, less than 1 percent of families headed by someone without a high school diploma have at least $1,000,000 in family wealth, but those odds increase fivefold when the head of household has earned a high school diploma.
We continued this conversation during a standing-room-only panel discussion at our 2021 National Summit. The session featured education experts Sharif El-Mekki of the Center for Black Educator Development, Shaka Mitchell of the American Federation of Children, Brightbeam’s Chris Stewart and our own Dr. Kymyona Burk (co-author of the blog series).
Each panelist spoke about how their area of education policy can improve educational outcomes for Black students. Dr. Kymyona Burk focused on early literacy policy, while Sharif El-Mekki discussed the dearth of Black teachers and steps policymakers can consider to increase the number Black teachers in classrooms. Shaka Mitchell described how education choice policies, such as education scholarship accounts, can increase the number of school options for Black families. Each of these policies can be leveraged in any state to improve the state of Black education.
As Dr. Carter G. Woodson astutely observed, “to point out merely the defects as they appear today will be of little benefit to the present and future generations.” In that spirit, we focus not only on the performance of Black students but also on how early literacy and school choice policies can play a role in improving opportunities and achievement for Black students.
As we continue with this series this year, we want to widen our net to include states where Black students make up at least 10 percent of the total population. And we’ll continue to introduce policy ideas that each state could pursue to improve the academic performance of its Black students.
Black students are still being miseducated in this country. Our aim is to raise awareness and offer ideas to combat the challenge. States not yet featured in the series noticed our work and have asked that we examine their State of Black Education, especially to address lack of access to programs and strategies to close opportunity gaps. We hope this momentum continues. Join us.
