African American Children in Early Childhood Education

Making the Case for Policy Investments in Families, Schools, and Communities

Iheoma U. Iruka, Stephanie M. Curenton, Tonia R. Durden

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787430297
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

Approximately 45% of young black children in the United States (under the age of six) live in poverty. It is well documented that education and economic security are inextricably linked and that early learning and early reading are undisputed contributors to a successful education. This book presents both the challenges and opportunities that exist for addressing the critical needs of black children, who have been historically underserved in the U.S. education system. This book explores the language, cognitive, social-emotional, and health development of black children from birth to age 8. The chapters approach this in three ways; first, they tackle why it is problematic to only characterize Black children's accomplishment in terms of "academic achievement." Second, they discuss the importance of the home-school environment connection. Lastly, they discuss the changes that need to be in teacher preparation in order to ensure that the workforce can practice racial equity in the classroom. These issues are woven together by a call to close the education opportunity gap via 'equity adjustments' that can target educational and health disparities facing the black community.

PART I
STRIVING FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUITY

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Stephanie M. Curenton, Iheoma U. Iruka and Tonia R. Durden

ABSTRACT

This introduction chapter provides an overview of the key issues highlighted throughout this book. First, we tackle why it is problematic to only characterize Black children’s accomplishment in terms of the “academic achievement gap.” Second, we discuss the importance of the home-school environment connection. Finally, we discuss the changes that need to be made in terms of teacher preparation in order to ensure that the workforce can practice racial equity in the classroom. All these issues are woven together by a call for closing the education opportunity gap via “equity adjustments” that can target educational and health disparities facing the Black community.

Keywords: Academic achievement; opportunity gap; Blacks/African Americans; racial equity

Education … means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free. To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature.

– “Blessings of Liberty and Education” (1894) Frederick Douglas

We open this chapter with Fredrick Douglas’ (1894) quote from his speech given at the dedication of the Manassas Industrial School chartered on October 7, 1893 in Manassas, Virginia.¹ Douglas eloquently describes the grave importance of education for Black² children. Unfortunately, even today too many Black children are overlooked and unheard in an education system that has yet to offer them equality of opportunity (Fowler, 2013). Equality of opportunity is the notion that educational inputs are equally distributed among groups of students in that all children everywhere are receiving equal quantity and quality of resources, such as access to high-quality teachers, curriculum, facilities, and extracurricular activities.

Darling-Hammond (1998) explains that in fact there is – and has always been – an opportunity gap due to vast disparities between the educational resources that Black children receive compared to those of White children. Currie (2011) explains that this opportunity gap is broader than education alone and extends to health disparities that are evident even at birth. It is this opportunity gap manifested by resource disparities that fuel the dreaded achievement gap (i.e., different educational outcomes by race or socioeconomic status [SES]). Researchers spend more time examining the achievement gap than investigating and documenting the opportunity gap. Likewise, policy makers devote more debates and resources to problem solving around student achievement rather than developing policies that dismantle the opportunity disparities between Blacks and Whites.

Striving for education equality is gravely important, however, opportunities cannot be “equalized” when health and education disparities exist from birth and from prior generations, and when such disparities span multiple levels of a child’s bioecological system (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). The distinction between equality and equity are debated in education policy with some arguing that equality only provides comparable resources, whereas what is actually needed is equity, which provides differential resources based on the disparities children face. In essence, equity can only be achieved via disparities corrections that are multidimensional policies and programs aimed starting at birth and following through to college a “disparities correction” that could only be achieved by multi-dimensional policies aimed at equity that start from birth and follow students through college. Inherit in equity is the desire to achieve the same result/outcome, what Fowler (2012) refers to as equality of outcome. Because children start from different points, some children may actually need a greater investment in resources in order to achieve the same outcomes, and we refer to these as equity adjustments.

Providing students who have experienced disparities their entire life with “equal” education opportunities will not produce the desired results without corrections for disparity. The reason why Black children need investments for equality plus equity adjustments is that these children reside in harsher environments and are more likely to live in poverty. For example, they are more likely to live in unsafe racially segregated environments (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). In fact, the level of concentrated poverty experienced by African American children is greater than that for White and Latino children (Sampson, Sharkey, & Raudenbush, 2008), which makes them a very unique subpopulation compared to others in the United States. Also, the portion of Blacks in the United States from African American lineage have ancestors that were legally oppressed physically, economically, and psychological for nearly 250 years of slavery and then another 100 years of Jim Crow. African Americans are unique in that no other American subpopulation (e.g., Whites or Latinos) was forced into legal servitude for as long a period or denied access to education for so long.

This long history of legalized oppression coupled with the current day de facto oppression evidenced by neighborhood segregation, racial profiling, and economic suppression have had long-term effects on African Americans’ educational attainment and achievement. Olmanson and colleagues (Chapter 4) provide a riveting history of education for Blacks, dating all the way back to Emancipation. Black children have been existing in a chronosystem and macrosystem (see Bronfenbrenner & Evan’s, 2000 bioecological model) that has habitually been racist against their past ancestors and is still racist against the children and families today. This racial oppression has impacted the educational opportunities of their forefathers and family members, as well as children’s current opportunities. Thus, Black children, particularly those from an African American lineage, need not only “equal” investments that will provide an equivalent educational foundation, but they also need “equity” investments that would provide additional resources in order to meet the challenges that they face. Such equity adjustments could be used to provide more instructional support, greater investments in health and mental health support services, accommodations to facilities and/or supplies, and a greater investment in pre-service and post-service teacher (and administrator) professional development related to cultural competence, social justice, and trauma informed care (Bath, 2008).

Therefore, we begin this handbook from the standpoint of acknowledging that society has continually failed to provide Black children with the opportunities required for them to succeed and a call for not only equality but also equity – equality in terms of equivalent resources and opportunities and equity in terms of additional resources targeted toward correcting disparities. In this handbook, a compilation of interdisciplinary scholars working in fields of education, psychology, and public health provide impassioned scholarly articles about the education and well-being of African American children and families. We hope this handbook provides some insight into not only the problems associated with inequality, but also ideas and strategies for how children can thrive despite the odds. However, before we begin to articulate the larger educational issues around academic achievement, home-school contexts, and the needs for teacher preparation and workforce development, it is important to present some basic demographic information about Blacks.

DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ABOUT BLACK CHILDREN

According to 2010 census data, Blacks/African Americans make up approximately 13% of the US population, which equates to about 40 million people (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). Nearly 7% of the Black population includes infants, toddlers, and preschoolers (i.e., those under the age of five) and another 19% are school age (five to 17 years). Among Blacks living in the Unites States, there are nearly 3.8 million people who are foreign-born, including those who have become naturalized citizens (2.1 million) and those who have not (1.7 million). The majority of the foreign-born Blacks hail from Latin America, including the Caribbean (56%), or Africa (41%), and the vast majority of them speak English (91%). Approximately 50% of these Black immigrants entered the United States before 2000, 30% entered between 2000–2009, and only 20% have entered since 2010.

In 2015, there are nearly 11.9 million Black children over the age of three who were enrolled in school: 6% of these children were enrolled in nursery school or preschool, 5% were in kindergarten, 39% were in elementary school (grades 1–8), 22% were in high school (grades 9–12), and 28% were in college or graduate school (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). For those adults age 25 or older, the vast majority have some education beyond high school: approximately 8% have graduate or professional degrees, 13% have bachelor’s degrees, and 33% have an associate’s degree or have attended some college, 32% have graduated from high school or received their Graduate Equivalency Degree (GED), but 15% have not completed high school. The information about the educational attainment of Black adults is an important aspect because not only is a caregiver’s educational attainment important for socioeconomic status, but it is also associated with the learning stimulation they provide in the home (see Curenton, Craig, & Flannigan, 2008; Curenton & Justice, 2008).

DEFINING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Each of opening chapters in this handbook (e.g., Chapter 2–4) attack the rhetoric of the “achievement gap.” In particular, Durden and Curenton (Chapter 3) call for “rethinking the gap.” In addition to the arguments posed by the authors of those chapters, we argue that the achievement gap is faulty because it does not capture the heterogeneity of Black children’s achievement. Rather the argument of the achievement gap is preoccupied with the average performance of Black and White students while ignoring the variability within these two groups. For instance, profile analyses using a national dataset of Black girls’ and boys’ performance demonstrates that the majority of Black children show steady and consistent growth in their academic skills from preschool to kindergarten (Iruka, Curenton, & Gardner, 2016; Iruka, Gardner-Neblett, Matthews, & Winn, 2014). Although there is about 20% of children whose academic performance is cause for concern, there is approximately another 20% whose academic performance exceeds expectations. This group of children with higher-than-average performance could represent the gifted and talented children that Sullivan talks about in Chapter 5.

Sullivan (Chapter 5) explains that teachers fail to understand the learning styles of Black children, and this could be one of the reasons why Black children are less likely to be referred for participating in gifted programs (Elhoweris, Mutua, Alsheikh, & Holloway, 2005). Gifted programs are some of the most segregated programs in US education. Zhbanova, Rule, and Stichter (2015) found that alternative methods for identifying African American children as gifted, such as leadership and peer-teaching, rather than standardized testing, are better measures for recognizing children's giftedness. Another one of Black children's talents that teachers often overlook is their oral narrative skills. In Chapter 6, Gardner-Neblett, Curenton, and Blitch describe the oral language skills of Black children and suggest some ways that the new educational standards could maximize on these skills.

HOME-SCHOOL CONTEXTS

Understanding the family and community context of Black families is important since it sheds light on the environments in which children are living. Based on 2015 Census estimates, most Blacks live in households with family members: 61% compared to 39% of those living in non-family households. About 50% of adults, both male and female, have never been married, 29% have been married, 16% are divorced/separated, and 6% are widowed. The average family size includes three-and-a-half people, and 6% of Black children have their grandparents living with them. Thus, Black children reside in households with a variety of family members.

One aspect of the Black family life that has received little attention is Black fatherhood. Chapters 9 and 10 (by Baker and Bocknek and colleagues, respectively) provide a rich and complex picture of Black fathers. They not only articulate what the literature says about fathering but also define family practices and values within this cultural group more specifically. Bocknek and colleagues (Chapter 10) also present evidence that debunks stereotypes of African American fathers, and instead paints these fathers as involved and nurturing. They describe how racial socialization can be a protective barrier for children, and they even mention how greater spirituality in fathers is related to less harsh discipline.

Most importantly, Chapters 9 and 10 critique the false dichotomy between warmth and strictness and describe how these two aspects of parenting functionally coexist in Black parenting styles. In fact, it is what Brody and his colleagues were referring to when they coined the term “no nonsense parenting.” (Brody & Flor, 1998). Research shows that parenting is predictive of Black children’s achievement. More specifically, parents who provided stimulating learning environments at home (e.g., more shared reading) had children whose teachers rated them as having better social-emotional skills that are related to school success, namely better approaches to learning, self-control, interpersonal skills, and less externalizing behavior (Baker & Rimm-Kaufman, 2014).

Another important contextual feature to understand in terms of Black children...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Part I Striving for Educational Equity
• Part II Home and School Environmental Contexts
• Part III Preparing Teachers and Improving Practice
• About the Authors
• Index