Resources
"Tavis Smiley Reports: Too Important to Fail"
"Too Important to Fail" is a television documentary that premiered on PBS examining the link between illiteracy and high school dropout rates among African American boys.
Parenting Matters
National Education Association Parent Resources
Developed through a joint effort between the NEA and National Parent Teacher Association, these two-page guides provide parents and caregivers with fundamental tools to encourage their children's success in school, including guides for mastering school testing, raising scientific literacy and preparing for kindergarten transition.
National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education
Comprised of parent organizations and advocacy groups, the National Coalition for Parent Involvement advocates for the involvement of parents and families in their children's education by monitoring legislation, initiating projects and sharing information and ideas about research, programs and policies.
Parent Involvement Matters
A grassroots organization that brings parents of students in the same grade level and schools together to develop meaningful solutions to ensure that parents become more fully engaged in helping their children succeed.
Education News
A global news source covering educational, political, business and environmental issues.
Youth to Leaders
A program founded by author, advocate, radio and talk show host Tavis Smiley, and part of the Tavis Smiley Foundation, that identifies young people with great potential and then provides training to help them develop into leaders.
Facing the School Dropout Dilemma
Dropout rates particularly correlate with high poverty rates, poor school attendance, poor academic performance, grade retention (i.e., being held back), and disengagement from school.
Preventing Future High School Dropouts
The greatest population growth in the U.S. is among racial and ethnic groups that have traditionally had lower levels of educational attainment (i.e., high school diplomas and college degrees). By 2020, the country's working-age population (ages 25–64) will be 30 percent Latino and Black—groups whose high school graduation rates have been below 60 percent.
What Challenges Are Boys Facing, and What Opportunities Exist to Address Those Challenges?
Young people, and especially boys, are more likely to be successful in school and less likely to drop out when their parents are involved in their lives and have high expectations for and positive relationships with them.
Resources for Parents Raising a Black Male Child
A list of books, guides and organizations specifically addressing the needs of Black boys that was compiled by David Johns, the director of development for IMPACT, an organization that works to strategically link business, government and nonprofit leaders with one another to help them accomplish their goals.
Safety First
Oakland Unified School District African American Male Achievement Task Force Summary Report June 2011
In Oakland, African American male students have the worst outcomes of any demographic group, despite improvements in some areas in recent years.
Reparable Harm: Assessing and Addressing Disparities Faced by Boys and Men of Color in California
Although there are large odds working against boys and men of color, there is a growing body of research that identifies approaches at the macro, community, interpersonal and individual levels that can improve those odds.
Getting to School
Present, Engaged, and Accounted For
Absenteeism is not just a high school problem: one in 10 kindergarten and 1st grade students misses nearly a month of school ever year in excused and unexcused absences.
Early Learning
Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
While the nationwide gaps in 2007 were narrower than in previous assessments at both grades 4 and 8 in mathematics and at grade 4 in reading, white students had average scores at least 26 points higher than Black students in each subject, on a 0-500 scale.
Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters
The process of dropping out begins long before a child gets to high school. It stems from loss of interest and motivation in middle school, often triggered by retention in grade and the struggle to keep up academically.
Healthy Kids
The Educational Well Being of African American Boys
Philadelphia, with nearly 25% of families living in poverty, has the highest poverty rate of the top 10 largest cities in America. Among school children the statistics are even more staggering.
Father Figures
Million Father March
The Black Star Project's Million Father March takes place from the homes of children to their schools with fathers and men accompanying their children and aims to post Black men near the front door at schools with sizable Black student populations to create an honor guard of strong, positive men supporting all children at that school.
Father Absence and the Welfare of Children
Living without a father increases the risk of dropping out of school by 150 percent among Anglo children. In contrast, father absence increases the school failure risk among African Americans and Hispanics by 75 percent and 96 percent respectively.
Man Up: Recruiting and Retaining African American Male Mentors
According to the MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership, nearly 17.6 million young Americans need or want mentoring, but only 3 million are in formal, high-quality mentoring relationships.
Incarceration in Fragile Families
One of every four African American children born in 1990 had a father go to prison. For children of high school dropouts, the share was one-half.
Brain Drain
Tutor.com
An online tutoring service that provides one-on-one help with homework assignments.
Webmath
Webmath is a math-help website that generates answers in real-time to specific math questions and problems, as entered by a user, at any particular moment.
African American Adolescent Male Summer Literacy Institute
The African American Adolescent Male Summer Literacy Institute, started by Dr. Alfred W. Tatum at the University of Illinois-Chicago, helps connect young males to literacy as a possible way to stay out of violence and poverty.
African American Male Initiative
AVID, a non-profit college-readiness program that serves approximately 400,000 students across the US, piloted a program called the African American Male Initiative that targets at-risk students to address the high dropout rate among young Black males. The program works through Summer Institutes in nine high schools with a goal to increase the number of African American males who graduate from high school and prepare them for a brighter future that includes college.