Schools in Oakland, California, may have found the key to closing the achievement gap between African-American males and other groups of students, according to a recent report.
In 2010, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) began offering elective courses specifically for its lowest-performing students: African-American males. Several years later, the initiative, known as the Manhood Development Program (MDP), has been successful in narrowing achievement gaps and improving school culture, says the report from Vajra Watson, director of research and policy for equity at the University of California, Davis.
“When students begin the program, many of them define blackness in America to be ugly, to be bad and all of these negative attributes,” said Watson in audio that accompanied a January press release for the report. “And then after being a part of the program and the brotherhood and learning about themselves, they start to identify as young kings, as scholars.”
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Other districts have approached Oakland schools for help, expressing an interest in putting together similar offices, said Christopher Chatmon, executive director of the Office of African American Male Achievement.
“We haven’t figured it all out in Oakland. We just have the audacity to really call out structural racism,” Chatmon told HuffPost. “We’ve seen some amazing data points moving in the right direction, but there’s still a lot more work to go.”
