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As more black teachers and administrators reach positions of power in the public school system, the anti-achievement ethic presents a special challenge to them as educators. For years, the failure of black students to succeed in white-run schools was attributed in large part to institutional racism. But some black educators are reassessing the blame. "It's absolutely ridiculous for us to be talking about what's happening to black youngsters when you've got a 90% African-American staff teaching a 95% black student body," says Franklin Smith, who is superintendent of schools in Washington and black himself. "If you can't prove what you believe here in Washington, then you might as well forget it anywhere in this country."
The effort to reverse the pattern of black failure has prompted educators like Smith to try many experiments -- Afrocentric curriculums, academic- achievement fairs and efforts to establish black all-male public schools that focus on building self-esteem. The reform movements seek to revive in black students the value system that prizes education as, among other things, a way out of poverty. "We dropped the ball," laments Trinette Chase, a Montgomery County, Md., mother. "Our generation failed to pass on the value of an education."
It is a truism to say the problem most often begins at home. When parents are not able to transmit the values of achievement, the ever present peer group fills the vacuum. Moniqua Woods, 12, a student at the Webster Academy in Oakland, says it is easy to spot neglected children because they "come to school every day yawning and tired. You know they stayed out late that night." Concurs classmate Mark Martin, also 12: "Some of the kids' parents are on drugs. You go in their house, and you can smell it." Such a homelife can further strengthen the attitude that school does not matter, especially if the parents themselves are without a diploma.
Kiante Brown, 15, of Oakland, knows this all too well. His mother is a recovering crack addict who, he says, pays little attention to his comings and goings, and he hasn't seen his father in two years. Kiante used to spend his afternoons selling drugs on street corners. What little education he has came in bits and pieces; he has missed so much school he'll have to repeat the eighth grade. "I didn't really drop out, but I haven't been going to school much," he says. "For a while my mom told me to get up and go to school, but she really doesn't say nothing about it anymore."
Teachers may try to move in where parents have retreated. But with class sizes increasing and school violence growing, it is often all educators can do to maintain minimal order, much less give individual attention to any child. Some teachers admit that the insidious attitudes creep into the classroom. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: when teachers have lower expectations for their black students, they give them less attention and do not push them as hard to do well. Such stereotypes have crossed racial barriers to the point where even black teachers may hold these same attitudes. "If teachers feel they cannot make any headway with a youngster," says Richard Mesa, superintendent of Oakland public schools, "they may write him off."