Educating Our At-risk Youth

Former State Sen. C.J. Prentiss is heading up a statewide effort to stem the tide of Black males dropping out of inner-city high schools. Gov. Strickland promised during his campaign that he would provide assistance in regards to finding a solution to this troubling phenomenon, and he is now delivering. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) funds, in the amount of $20 million over two years, is being earmarked to allow school districts across the state to focus on 9th graders in schools where the graduation rate is under 70 percent.

The amount per student works out to around two-thousand dollars for each 9th grader that exhibits certain behavioral tendencies that are predictive of them being in eminent danger of falling through the cracks and eventually dropping out of school — which, of course, is all too often a pipeline to prison or an early death due to street violence.

Each school district across the state gets to determine how the money is spent to help the at-risk students, and, judging from early indications there will be almost as many ideas on how to use the funds as there are students to use them on. So, with that being the case, I might as well lobby for my pet solution: Bribes.

Yes, bribes. Pay the money directly to the students in return for good grades. They’re doing it in New York City and it’s working — but not without some controversy. You see, there are some educational purists out there that are of the opinion that students should not have to be bribed, they should be taught (or perhaps born with the gene) to love education for the sheer joy of obtaining knowledge. Of course they often express these views as they board a plane with their children on the way to Disneyland as a reward for them getting good grades. The fact is, virtually all parents bribe their children in some way or another and a large part of the reason inner-city kids are doing worse is because their parents are (in addition to being under-educated themselves) too poor to offer incentives.

Don’t get me wrong... I’m a writer, I would be thrilled for kids to read just for the sheer joy of reading, but if a 9th grade boy is struggling in school to the point where he is about to drop out introducing him to Harry Potter isn’t going to save the day... he just isn’t interested.

My fear is the adults who will come up with the plan to impact on the problem won’t remember what it was like to be in early adolescence. Fourteen and 15-year old boys are usually interested in two things: The opposite sex and sports ... and some of them are not all that talented at sports. I know that much has changed since I was in my callow youth back in a Paleozoic Era, but some things remain the same. Boys want to be able to dress sharp to impress girls, and then be able to afford to take them out to a movie, and (you can take this part to the bank) they will drop out of school to rob, steal and sell drugs to be able to accomplish this goal.

These kids are from families that are as broke as the Ten Commandments and we are expecting them to function like kids from financially stable backgrounds; it just won’t happen. I have a real issue with people who have never experienced the problems of the underclass firsthand trying to come up with solutions ... when they really have no basis for understanding the dynamics of poverty — and therefore cannot make genuine, informed decisions or formulate workable solutions. Additionally, these well-meaning folks oftentimes feel that if a family is mired in poverty the members of that family are too dumb to know what will work in terms of helping them out of their situation.

A simple truth is, most young urban black males don’t have family members with construction or landscaping companies where they can work during the summer and accumulate some spending money; the unemployment rate for this demographic hovers around 80 percent. Just look at the race of most of the workers on most construction and maintenance projects, even in the inner-city: Overwhelmingly (and shamefully) White.

So, if we want them to pay more attention to the books, we have to pay more attention to their needs (as they define them), and pay them for getting good grades. As a society we compare education to wealth all the time. How many studies are out there comparing the lifetime earning potential of drops outs, versus high school grads, versus bachelor’s degrees, versus masters, versus PhD’s? Yet we want poor 9th graders to hit the books for the love of it — while parents with more financial wherewithal bribe their kids all of the time — I mentioned that part earlier, didn’t I?

A parallel issue for young, Black urban males has to do with expectations: Young people tend to rise, or sink (as the case may be), to them. Study after study has shown that this demographic receives more frequent and severe punishments from school officials than their white counterparts.

What I think is happening here (at least in part) is that teachers and school administrators are furious at bad parents who don’t teach their children the basics (such as manners) and — since they can’t punish the deficient parent — they take it out on the child. When a young person is constantly told they are “bad” they soon begin to believe it. It’s not too much of a stretch to think these kids are being conditioned to accepting this kind of treatment, as a prelude to how they will be treated as adults at the hands of an unfair criminal justice system.

Thankfully some folks at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland are doing something about this rush to sanction Black males. A program entitled “Continued Legal Advocacy for Student Success) CLASS will provide children in the Cleveland Municipal School District with legal representation at expulsion hearings — more commonly known as kangaroo courts. For more information call 687-1900 or 888-817-3777. The goal of the program is to keep kids in school and engaged in the education process... and after all, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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