Posted on 02/06/2006 2:21:01 PM PST by MissouriConservative
Supporters of African-centered education in Kansas City think the time is finally right to extend the program all the way through high school.
A task force of parents and educators is pushing to open a district-sponsored African-centered charter school or campus for grades six through 12 by the 2007-08 school year, if not sooner. The school would extend the district’s African-centered education (ACE) program, which now consists of two elementary schools and a middle school.
The effort is drawing national interest.
“People want to see a test,” said Wade Nobles, a San Francisco State University social psychologist. “Kansas City is the test.”
For most of the past decade, the concept has struggled against significant opposition and skepticism. Various combinations of administrators, board members and officials in the now-ended federal desegregation case stood against expansion.
But faces have changed, program advocate Ajamu Webster said, and the proponents appear to be gaining wider acceptance of their arguments that expanding the program through the 12th grade would not prove racially divisive, that the high school curriculum would be rigorous and college preparatory and that a white person such as Thomas Jefferson would still have his place in history.
The school board’s education committee last month reviewed the proposal, and the chairman, Bill Eddy, praised the task force’s work.
Arthur A. Benson II, the plaintiffs’ attorney in the desegregation lawsuit, was critical of expanding ACE programming in 2002, raising concerns that it may have contributed to the achievement gap between black and white students. Court documents noted that Benson said he did not have data to support that concern.
He doesn’t want to re-enter the fray.
“I have no opinion now,” he said.
Attorney Clinton Adams, who is active in the district and who has been critical of past attempts at expansion, thinks the ACE program’s success at the elementary school level has earned it a chance at the high school level.
The task force will continue refining its proposal over the next month. Then the plan could go before the full school board.
Kansas City’s ACE elementary schools — J.S. Chick and Ladd — have improved their test scores since becoming district magnet schools in the 1990s. And Chick has been one of the district’s top-performing schools on the Missouri Assessment Program tests.
But the district’s 3-year-old attempt to expand its ACE middle school, Clarke African Centered Academy at Meservey, has struggled. Under the new proposal, students now at Clarke could continue in the ACE program through graduation.
An earlier effort to start an ACE program at Southeast High School never got off the ground, in part because many of the students there had not been exposed to African-centered education.
Without a strong connection to elementary programs, too many older students will resist embracing the concept, said Cheryl Ajirotutu, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
ACE supporters want to inspire more students like eighth-grader Zakiya Anderson, who came through Chick Elementary and now finds herself missing a strong African-centered program in middle school and wishing she had a choice of an African-centered high school.
“You feel like you’re part of something,” she said.
She remembered the traditional African songs the children sang at Monday morning assemblies, “feeling stronger, feeling like you wanted to learn more.”
Throughout history, program coordinator Kevin Bullard said, African-American children have learned from texts that look at African culture from the outside, as cultures discovered by Europeans.
The new model gives students a chance to learn from the inside looking out. Their culture is validated as the one doing the studying, rather than being the studied.
The curriculum standards required by the state don’t change. ACE leaders want graduates to head off to universities with a complete and competitive academic foundation.
So of course Thomas Jefferson will have his place, Webster said. He’s still the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, the third president of the United States.
But there’s so much more, Webster said, racing through “a teaching moment” on Jefferson and the political dynamics of slavery that shaped America long before the Civil War.
“It’s higher-level learning,” Bullard said. “Comparing and contrasting cause and effects. The realities are the same, but the context is different.”
And the underlying message — as students see African-American scholars, scientists, inventors, authors and artists woven into the lessons — is that they should expect greatness of themselves.
“The intent is to reshape consciousness so that they feel they have value and self-respect, that they are equal to anyone,” Bullard said. “They are inheritors of a rich cultural history.”
Scherrie Jones, a 2000 graduate of Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, experienced the first years of ACE programming at Chick in the early 1990s. Her mother is one of the Chick teachers.
She remembers the extra work, on top of the regular English and science, having to write biographies of African-American achievers: Garrett A. Morgan, inventor of the three-way traffic signal, poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
“There I was, a fifth-grader, doing research, thinking this is so wonderful,” Jones said. “I wanted to read more and write more.”
Jones, a graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans who will be entering law school this year at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, thinks an ACE middle and high school program would work well with children coming out of elementary programs.
“The seed would be watered all throughout,” she said.
To see what’s possible, said Zakiya’s mother, Letisha Elston, just ask the teen-ager about her plans for after high school.
Sure enough, Zakiya says she wants to be a mathematician, a “tech engineer,” designing a new car “from the bottom up.” She wants to be an actress, director and producer.
“I want to be an entrepreneur.”
Elston, who graduated from Central High School in 1991, is awed by her daughter’s ambition. Elston, who remembers black history as something she learned only during the month of February, suspects that the inspiration in African-centered education has something to do with it.
“Teachers always told us, ‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ but we weren’t thinking things like that,” Elston said. “She’s saying ‘I can invent,’ ‘I can build.’ ” Q&A
Q: What is African-centered education?
A: Advocates describe it is an academic and character-building program guided by African and African-American cultural and intellectual traditions. Students who otherwise might think the culture is inferior are immersed in it and presented with role models. They don’t have to overcome anything, but can expect to excel as who they are.
Q: What about critics who say African-centered education can distort history?
A: Advocates say the program looks at all history — the same history — from an African center rather than a European center. For instance, African-American history doesn’t begin with the European slave traders, but explores African achievements and traditions alongside other cultures before and after slavery.
Q: Does the curriculum compromise the state’s academic standards?
A: African-centered education expects to meet and exceed the same state standards in math, language and science and prepare students for college, district ACE leaders say. The program uses the district’s core curriculum. One ACE school, J.S. Chick Elementary, has been one of the district’s top-performing schools on the Missouri Assessment Program tests.
Q: Could the program cultivate hostility toward the white population?
A: Advocates say the African-centered program values diversity and is grounded in the belief that different cultures can and should thrive together. The program wants all students to be comfortable embracing who they are, to embrace others as they are and to be open to all cultures.
Q: Is it exclusively for African-American children?
A: No, although virtually all the children at the district’s three ACE schools are African-American.
Program leaders think African-centered education would be enriching for any student, the same as other themed immersion programs, such as a foreign language academy or an Asian studies school. In an ACE classroom
Teachers try to use African-American themes to enhance the same curriculum standards required of all district schools. Here are samples of fourth- and fifth-grade lesson plans from December for J.S. Chick Elementary School students.
■ Assembly: Students gather for harambee, where they sing traditional African songs and recognize students for good citizenship, leadership and academic success by awarding either rosette beads or Kente’ cloths that are shoulder sashes.
■ Communication arts: Write daily journal entries. Read the story “Almost Home,” an account of the Underground Railroad, and summarize it in their writer’s notebooks. Study weekly vocabulary with a partner.
■ Reading workshop: Hold small group to read about Kwanzaa and discuss why it is a unique celebration. Write a summary paragraph. Hold round one of spelling bee. Work on placemats for parents in preparation for school Kwanzaa feast.
■ Science: Investigate what happens to rubbed balloons, and make hypotheses. Discuss as a group. Continue research on African-American inventor.
■ Geography: Practice kujichagulia, or self-determination, to use the Internet to find information about climate, water, land formations, people and characteristics of a country in Africa. Begin work on written reports. Discuss use of bibliography in research.
I am ashamed anymore to admit that I am from Kansas City. In my humble opinion if these children want to learn about Africa, they need to look at the countries there today. Despotic rulers, poverty, famine, genocide, and countries that are a majority of the poorest on earth. Then let them look at the country they ACTUALLY live in and make a basic comparison.
Again, I apologize for this most vile of liberal cities in the midwest.
Will there be a white Euro-centric American school as well?
(sarcasm off)
I think Zimbabwe announced it will force it's students to learn MANDARIN. So a reallllly Afrocentric US school should follow suit; "A-B-C-D CHING CHO WA...!"
Great.
Now I would like to see German, Italian, Swedish, Irish.
Nah, never gonna happen.
But but but....
How about field circumcision with no antiseptic? That's genuinely African. Or female genital mutilation...
That genuinely Islamic....not exactly African in its origins.
Lunchtime feast: air and MUD. Followed by a game of "Ring Around the AK".
I don't have a problem with this, per se. The key thing thats not 100% clear is whether or not the academic standards are high, and philosophically if the Enlightenment principles that led to the creation of the US are taught at all.
This is the complaint I have about public schools in general, that the academics are watered down to the point of vanishing, and the basic values of republican democracy are almost not taught, by teachers who only barely understand them. If they could do those two things, they can learn all the african folk songs they want to, and I'll be happy.
I like african folk songs. Let a thousand blossoms bloom. But teach the basics too.
How Generous!
I think that it will be a trend in the future. Near my hometown they have an Indian-centered school. I imagine that some Islamists want to open up their own schools too.
We may become a nation of "special" schools. Who knows?
What amazes me is that the black people can't see what is happening. They are nothing more than, as you say, social experiments. What is worse is that the liberals are using CHILDREN to experiment upon. The future of these children depend upon what they learn today. In the article one girl states that she was lost when left the African centered grade school and wished she had an African centered high school to go to. What is she and her compatriots going to do when they discover that there is not an African centered college? They will not be able to adapt at all and will be lost and the price in human waste will be enormous.
I pity the children and have nothing but scorn for the adults who are running around trying everything under the sun to make it look like they are accomplishing something.
Thomas Jefferson is a white ancestor to some black people.
I agree with you on that.
Islamists have their own schools ALL over the USA. I know of a few prominent ones here in TX. There are plenty on the East and West coasts and in Michigan (Detroit) in addition to other places.
I can picture the children learning how to occupy a white owned farm with the blessings of the government.
Lol! That is the only reason they talk about him...the evil white slavemaster jumpin bones.
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