History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
It's time to get serious about boosting Black males' academic achievement
- 08-22-2011
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By Liz Dwyer/Good
As school systems across the country grapple with the sobering statistics about black males' performance, a new documentary hopes to inspire some real solutions. The film, Beyond the Bricks, follows two black male students in Newark, New Jersey, but the issues the teens face are representative of what their peers across the country experience. On the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress test, a mere 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys were proficient in reading or math. In comparison, 38 percent of white boys were proficient in reading and 44 percent were proficient in math. The situation in Los Angeles, where the film will play this week, is equally dire. According to Ryan J. Smith, the director of family and community engagement for the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, only 40 percent of black males graduate from high school. There's been plenty of talk about the problem, Smith says, "but there aren't a lot of solutions on the table." (more...)
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