Summary
- The following are five major factors of effective schools:
- The principal is the instructional leader.
- Teachers have high expectations.
- Students spend more time on task.
- There is a positive school climate.
- Testing is used to guide further instruction and not solely for evaluation.
- The following list is things that schools can do to better the performance of African American students:
- Mandatory in-service training for teachers on black male learning styles.
- A Booker T. Washington/W.E.B. Dubois role model program.
- A Rites of Passage program.
- A fourth-grade intervention team (ministers, social workers, community activist entrepreneurs, and psychologists).
- Increase black male teacher assistance.
- Increase black male teachers.
- A Dr. King class on nonviolence.
- A Malcolm X class for those assigned to in-house suspensions.
- Single gender classrooms (Over 500 schools have created single-gender classrooms and report less suspensions and teen pregnancies, and an increase in test scores).
Commentary
I liked a lot of the suggestions that the author made. School systems are constantly striving to find qualified black teachers; however, it never occurred to me that they could also find black paraprofessionals. With the economy in disarray, many educated African Americans may be unemployed from fields outside of education. Although they might not be licensed, these educated African Americans could inspire African American youth in schools. The idea of single-gender classrooms in public schools is something to which I have never been introduced. I think that a lot of misbehavior in intermediate and middle schools comes from trying to impress the opposite sex. If that peer pressure is removed, the students could very possibly be more attentive and learn more. This is something that I would like to learn more about.
