The Ohio State Department of Education published its goals for White students at 86.3 versus 63.4 for Black students, as reported by the Performance Index Subgroup Data. The NAACP Leadership made this presentation to the Roberts Deliberating Club (RDC), which is comprised of Black professionals and business leaders, last month, where data was rolled out that they found to be incredulous.
“If this is true, why is the community not more aware,” said Atty Charles Mickens, an RDC member.
“We are trying to make the community aware of this disparity which is why we are presenting it, said George Freeman, NAACP President. “It took a while to ferret out the details.”
“In March 2018, the State Superintendent didn’t even know that he could require teachers to teach the State standards,” said Freeman.
“When we pointed out to him that he had the power to order the teachers to comply and as of August 2018, there was an official order to do so.”
It took time to dig into the details, but the Ohio Department of Education Superintendent DeMaria has ordered the teachers to adhere to standards for the first-time in history, said Freeman.
That might sound unbelievable, but in retrospect, it is hard to fathom, but thanks to the leadership of the local and state NAACP, there has been intense and focused attention on providing remedies long overlooked.
DeMaria responded to a series of questions posed by the NAACP Education Task Force, one of them being, “Are all Ohio Licensed classroom teachers required to teach the State Criterion Reference Standards?”
His answer in a written response in August 2018 “There is no legal requirement specifically directed to teachers relative to teaching the State’s standards”.
DeMaria followed with the statement “standards are what is tested, one might suggest a strong motivation to teach the standards.”
The response came following months of digging into the data to prove that the fault of the failures falls squarely in the lap of the administration of both the State and the school District.
“If they don’t require it, strong motivation obviously has not had an impact” said Dr. McNair, president of the RDC. The 20 years of published report card failures prove a strong motivation does not make a requirement.”
“We often battle the misperception that poverty is the cause for low performance, but data has proven conclusively that race is a factor not understood or factored in the equation,” said Jimma McWilson, who chairs the State NAACP Task Force on ESSA and Preventing School Takeovers and serves as the Secretary of the local chapter.
Indeed, Steubenville, which mirrors Youngstown with a 100% poverty student population, has targets much higher and performance much higher. The missing link is addressing the race factor specifically, said McWilson.
When the State audit of the District was released it validated this important flaw which is obviously a key to success for students.
“You’ve heard of students graduating with high GPA’s that struggle in college because of the lack of preparation. That preparation weakness is a signal that the grades were not standard, but subjective based on the classroom teacher,” said Freeman.
“We’ve been at this for several years and the consistent clear message is that many educators don’t know the legal ramifications of their positions,” said Freeman.
“The rhetoric around teaching to a test has been bandied about, but the standards are what is required on college entrance exams” said Jerry Sutton, CPA and RDC member.
“Things like this have been happening for years and more people need to be aware of them. We could have kept them (NAACP) here for hours,” said Sutton.
Dr. McNair commended the NAACP leadership for keeping a keen focus on these details.
“We find it unbelievable that the standards have not been required, but rather suggested. And the fact that the State targets are so low for Black students only reinforces the fact, as earlier reported, the failure is not on the parents or poverty or even the teachers. It’s the leadership. If teaching the standards is not required or inspected, it can’t realistically be expected,” said McNair.
“What makes it so unfortunate is the Black community and the children’s future is in peril as a result. It is unconscionable,” said McNair.
“The big challenge is the R word,” said Dr. McNair. “When race is discussed as a problem White people often have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the problem. The data clearly indicates addressing race, and not poverty only, is a leadership, and a strategic planning issue that must be addressed head on.”
The Roberts Deliberating Club meeting was held at Mill Creek Community Center on Glenwood Ave, Youngstown, in December 15, 2018. The following link is to the State report card with the targets for improvement.
In February 1959, Patricia Turner and her brother James Turner, Jr., walked through the front door of the Norview Middle School and into the history books.
They were two of the Norfolk 17, the first Black students to desegregate six Norfolk public schools.
The Turners and the other 15 students made history after months of resistance by the city of Norfolk and the state of Virginia, each refusing to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision five years earlier that segregated public schools were illegal.
During her time at Norview Middle and then Norview High School, Turner, like the 16 other Black students, endured isolation, verbal abuse and taunts inflicted by White students who were venting hatred and anger inspired by a resentful dominant culture resistant to their history-making experience.
In 1963, despite these challenges, Pat Turner would graduate from Norview High School and set herself emotionally to never look back.
She attended business college, became an accountant, married briefly and worked for Norfolk Public Schools for two decades.
Due to an Honorary Doctorate degree awarded by Old Dominion University, “Dr. Turner” is now seeking to secure an “earned” ODU doctorate.
Over the past five years, although she may have succeeded in “erasing” most of the bad memories of long ago, she has managed to secure some emotional and moral closure in a way she could have little predicted.
Today, she regularly joins a group of her White former classmates for lunch at Bubba’s Seafood Restaurant on Shore Drive In Virginia Beach.
As she did when she was in school with them, Turner is the lone Black sitting amidst the remaining White female members of the Norview Senior Class of 1963.
“I sit and I am mostly quiet,” said Turner, who admits she is introverted. “During the lunches, we do not talk about the past all the time. But it has come up.
“I have been able to educate them from the perspective of a member of the Norfolk 17, as they have educated me about what was going on with them back then.”
Turner and the other 16 Black children desegregated those all-White schools during the fall of 1958 by federal law. But rather than admit them, the city closed all of the White schools which were targeted to be desegregated. It was the state law.
While the schools were closed, many of the White high school seniors went to work or the military. The traditional senior year transition to adulthood and college was erased.
Since no White students applied to attend any of the all-Black schools, they remained opened.
“They (the White students at Norview) were told by their parents that we (the Norfolk 17) were trying to take their schools and deny them an education,” Turner said. “So they were punishing us. It was not our fault. Nor was it their fault, it was the city … the politicians which closed the schools.
“I explained to them that we were just 17 little Black kids, trying to get an education” Turner said. “Segregation was illegal. But they did not understand that. Their parents did not explain to them, why and what we were doing, until I explained it all. I also told them about me as a person. Now they know.”
Turner said her interaction with her White classmates started five years ago when plans for the class of 1963’s 50th reunion were being devised. She was approached to join them during the planning session in Nags Head.
“I was so surprised,” Turner recently told the Guide. “Initially I was very leery … afraid. I had never had any contact with them since leaving high school. This is why I had one of my friends accompany me to that first meeting. Then I attended by myself.”
Turner said after 50 years, her classmates had aged, as she did. She had no idea of how they looked back in the day; she never had the chance.
But they knew she was the “Black Girl” who was walking through a sea of White hatred and anger.
“So if they were any of the ones who said or did nasty things to me back then, I could not identify them,” Turner said. “None of them have admitted they did.”
“But there was one. A woman who died recently,” Turner said, “and she would come up…hug me… start crying so hard…she would wet up my clothes. I do not know what was on her heart…to make her feel so bad. But I had to tell some of the other classmates, to tell her that all of the crying and hugging was not necessary. She did stop.”
Turner said because she sought to educate her White classmates and explain to them, her role as a member of the Norfolk, 17, her classmates have made attempts to redeem themselves with small gestures.
Turner explained she was an “outsider” as a Black child attending Norview Middle and High schools. She had no social life.
She also did not interact with the Black students at Ruffner Middle or Booker T. Washington High schools.
So she was a “outsider,” too, from the Black community, as well.
At one of the Norview class reunions, she was made the honorary Homecoming Queen.
Also, at one of the luncheons, her classmates organized a birthday party for her.
“I did not have a normal childhood after I entered Norview Middle School,” Turner said. “I could not join a club, be a cheerleader, have a boyfriend or enjoy lunch time talking to friends. My childhood was stolen. I have reclaimed something from even people who thought I was trying to take something from them. But like them, all I wanted was a good education and to enjoy life.”
Today, only 11 of the Norfolk 17 are still alive. Like the others, Turner despite her efforts to “move on” from her experiences at
Norview Middle and High schools, she is reminded of those experiences.
Over the years she has been reminded often of the chapter she wrote in Norfolk’s and the nation’s history.
Although she believed it, the idea of Pat Turner being an “outsider” in the view of the Black and most of the White community of Norfolk, has been erased long ago, as she is frequently reminded, in word, deed and image.
The spotlight will be even brighter early next year, when Norfolk will observe the 60th anniversary of the Norfolk 17 who etched their legacy in the city’s, Virginia’s and the nation’s history books.
I’ve never been good at remembering special dates – Memorial Day, my girl’s birthday – most dates besides Christmas, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving get past me. So when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Noble’s press coordinator on May 17 called me about a press conference to discuss he and running mate Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinubu’s position on education and segregation, it didn’t sink in that May 17 commemorated the 64th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against public schools segregation.
Maybe it’s not so hard to forget that racial segregation in public schools is supposed to be against the law because schools still are racially segregated. Heck, America still is racially segregated! Electing a Black president was monumental, but did little to change the reality of racism in America. Most recently I’ve been thinking there is no real desire to end segregation, racism and discrimination in America.
According to one source, the NAACP since the 1930s had been fighting to end racial segregation in public schools. A lawsuit that began in South Carolina’s ‘Corridor of Shame’ in Clarendon County led to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Clarendon County’s public schools today still are shamefully segregated, unequal and discriminated against.
In 1954 the Supreme Court gave America a way out of the order to end segregation, racism and discrimination. The Supreme Court’s decision did not spell out any method for ending racial segregation in schools. It only ordered states to desegregate “with all deliberate speed”. That’s the same rouse South Carolina’s Supreme Court used to make the 20-year-old Corridor of Shame lawsuit go away. And neither the state’s legislature nor the people who elect it have moved an inch otherwise.
The race disparities in Charleston County report released last year by the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston documented some things most of us know. Despite having some schools that are racially integrated, racial disparities in educational attainment still are blatant. In 2008 about 74,000 whites in the county had attained a Bachelor’s or higher degree compared to about 7,000 Blacks.
In the 2015-2016 school year, the five schools with the highest poverty indicator were predominantly Black schools and those with the lowest poverty indicator were predominantly white. In 2015 of the students taking and passing advance placement tests about 78 percent of Asian students passed AP tests, about 76 percent of White students passed the tests while only about 25 percent of Black student passed the tests.
During the 2014-2015 school year there were about 8,000 suspensions in Charleston County schools. Black males accounted for about 4,500 of those suspensions. Black females accounted for another 2,000 suspensions. Among elementary school students, Black students accounted for about 1,900 of the 2,200 suspensions. Black males accounted for about 1,400 of those suspensions.
In December I talked with former Charleston County School Board Chair Hillery Douglas who said those disparities exist because some residents in the county are “hell-bent” on insuring that progress for Black citizens is limited. That effort is played out in every aspect of daily life, including public education, he said.
“It may be hard to believe those people exist in these times, the 21st century. But there are those who would limit our gains in politics, economics, education – you name it. It’s not so pervasive in other parts of the state. But here, it’s blatant. To overcome that we must ask ourselves whether our progress will be determined more by us or that group. Do we put forth the effort to guide our children to become successful? We have kids who are smart. Will we invest more in them or in our iPhones, hair and nails? It’s a hard job to get people to be engaged. Some of our people are fighting, but so many don’t know how to fight. They don’t know how to instill in their children the things that make them successful. And there are those among us who let a few dollars influence whether or not we do the right things. We’ve got some politicians who shouldn’t be in office,” Douglas said.
The 64th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision against segregated public schools – by some estimates counted in 20-year intervals – that’s more than three generations. I applaud Noble’s willingness to address racism and inequality, to put those issues on the table as he campaigns to become S.C. governor. But then, that’s who Phil Noble is. It’s not just a discussion with him: it’s a life philosophy. I first came to know of Noble because of his positions on race and racism in our community.
The sad part is, for far too many it is just a matter of discussion. For politicians it’s a talking point. The laws and legislation they introduce and enact however says something different. Meaningful change can occur in 100 years – that’s if you mean to change. Obviously few mean to change the segregation and inequality that exists in our schools. I think the sooner we make that admission, the sooner we can move on. A definition of crazy is doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result. We’re all not crazy. So when it comes to segregated unequal education, quit spittin’ on me and callin’ it rain.
We’re all not crazy. So when it comes to segregated unequal education, quit spittin’ on me and callin’ it rain.
The Arizona State University and Phoenix Seminary graduate has been on that mission since she gave birth to a son, years ago.
Her prayer, she said, is that she’ll be a “radiant light in dark spaces” who leaves a legacy of hope, peace and love.
Wood and other parents in the Phoenix area’s Black Mothers Forum are seen as game-changers in the fight for education equality for Black children.
Led by Wood, who has served as a pastor in a women’s prison and as Chief of Staff for the Phoenix City Council, the group has taken the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the education law passed during the Obama Administration, very seriously. The Black parents’ group is using ESSA to leverage their awareness and involvement in their children’s education and to ensure that African American students excel in the public school system.
“We, as Black mothers, have come together to collectively address the concerns that we have with our Black sons and daughters being pushed out of their schools at an alarmingly higher rate than their White peers all over the nation,” Wood said.
The mission of the Black Mothers Forum, Wood explained, is to educate parents on their rights with respect to student discipline and a culturally-inclusive curriculum, while also getting organized through focus groups that allow members of the forum to execute a course of action to effectively make structural changes.
“We do this by meeting multiple times a month and having various experts come in from various organizations to educate and train our mothers on knowing their rights, sharing a culturally-integrated curriculum and learning [the signs and symptoms] of any mental health challenges our children may be experiencing,” Wood said.
For instance, the group has entered partnerships with the ACLU’s Demand 2 Learn program, Arizona State University’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and other initiatives.
Members of the Black Mothers Forum, also completed a 13-week course on Black history to help develop a deeper understanding of their ancestors so that they could properly inform their children.
“We attend high school and grade school district board meetings regularly and address the disproportionate suspensions and dismissals of our students of color for minor infractions,” said Gwendolyn Payton, a Black Mothers Forum member, who also serves in the Equality division of the organization. “As a result of speaking out, schools are contacting us to come on campus and be visible and interact with our students of color. We challenge the schools to include more culturally diverse curriculum and activities and to hire more teachers and principals of color.”
In February, when a Black Phoenix charter school student was pulled out of school after officials claimed the boy’s hair braids violated school policy, the Black Mothers Forum sprang into action to defend the youth causing the district to issue a mea culpa and welcome the child back to school.
“The dress code at the school was specifically created as another means of targeting and harassing our Black children,” Wood said.
But, it’s just one reason why the group must encourage Black mothers to attend school board meetings and request study sessions be conducted publicly to address the disproportionate disciplinary practices with respect to Black children, Wood said.
“When we show up in large numbers to address an issue we have seen positive results,” Wood said. “We have found that in order to dismantle the school to prison pipeline it starts with us focusing in on ensuring our children are in safe and supportive learning environments and that means we need to address the punitive disciplinary actions administered by implicitly biased school administers and teachers.”
Wood continued: “We strongly believe that, as parents, we have the power to change the current school system when we collectively communicate the same message.”
According to Wood, that message is simple:
“We, as Black mothers, will no longer remain silent while our children are blatantly disrespected, threatened, harassed, intimidated, provoked, neglected and set up to fail through policies, disciplinary practices, curriculum, regulations and/or laws deeply rooted in racial stereotypes.”