Black Lives Matter: Schott Foundation Explores Public School and Underserved Black Males

For the academic year 2013—2014, the graduation rate at Eagle Academy Bronx (the first school in the network and the first to graduate a class) was 78%, much higher than the city’s overall graduation rate (not just the rate of black and Latino students) of 50%. The school graduated 74 young men.

According to Meade, the population it serves comes to school up to three grades behind. These are the students the Schott Report says are underserved. This “academic barrier,” as Meade calls it, is the first problem that Eagle Academy schools vigorously address. Students are brought up to grade level with more time on task, academic enrichment and support through extended day programming, targeted Saturday programming, and summer sessions.

Students may also receive double periods of math or English. “They have social-emotional needs that need to be addressed. Many of our young men don’t feel safe at home or in their neighborhoods.” Their literacy skills haven’t been addressed comprehensively, Meade says, “which is more of a problem now that Common Core requires reading to be embedded in math.” (The Common Core State Standards are the set of higher English and math K-12 standards that most states have adopted.)

Meade says a second problem is the lack of male leadership in a consistent, structured way in the homes and communities that most of the students come from. He says that strong male leadership helps to stabilize young men, and that stabilizing the staff at Ocean Hill has been crucial. There are about 81 staff members, 47 of whom are male. Of those, 38 are men of color, and many come from the neighborhood. “They are mentors and role models as well as staff members,” says Meade.

Eagle Academy, which offers its students four Advanced Placement classes, receives 1,000 applications every year. The network of schools requires no interview, no letters of recommendation, and no particular grade point average for its incoming sixth-graders.

When asked about suspension as a means of discipline, Meade said, “Suspending the child out of the building heightens the problem.” Instead of suspensions, Eagle Academy Ocean Hill practices mediation between students or between students and staff. It also uses in-school suspensions, which may involve older students working with younger boys. Meade stresses that each child is different, and that just speaking to some students is effective.

With a graduation rate of 78% it’s clear that even Eagle Academy isn’t reaching all its students. Sometimes success means just breaking the cycle of poverty, says Donald Ruff, Eagle Academy’s director of strategic partnerships and college planning, not necessarily earning a four-year degree.

To be a nation in which all children thrive, says Christopher, we need to create conditions that propel vulnerable children to succeed. The Eagle Academy Foundation is clearly on the side of helping to create those conditions, and to making the results of the next Schott Report a lot more positive.