A major report – highly critical of public schools for their poor record of graduating black male students – holds Fort Bend County up as a benchmark for what can be achieved.
In “Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males,” the Schott Foundation for Public Education compiled data that shows fewer than half of black males nationally received high school diplomas along with their classmates in 2005/2006.
While critical of state educational systems showing trends that indicate “evidence of a school-age population that is substantively denied an opportunity to learn,” the report’s authors hold up at least some aspects of Fort Bend Independent School District as a benchmark for the rest of the nation.
Most dramatic, of all districts in the study with more than 10,000 black males students, Fort Bend ISD is listed as having the highest graduation percentage among black males, at 82%.
The gap between the percentage of black and white males graduating at Fort Bend ISD high schools was listed at 3%, with 85% of white males graduating in 2005/2006. That was the lowest gap in the nation among districts with more than 10,000 black male students.
By comparison, Houston ISD ranked No. 19 on the Schott Educational Inequity Index, with just 47% of black males graduating and 65% of white males graduating – creating an 18% gap.
The foundation said its study focuses on black males because that demographic group has been “more systemically devastating than the outcomes for any other racial or ethnic group or gender. Black males have consistently low educational attainment levels, are more chronically unemployed and underemployed, are less healthy and have access to fewer health care resources, die much younger, and are many times more likely to be sent to jail for periods significantly longer than males of other racial/ethnic groups.”
If study results showed that black students did poorly in every school, “we would plausibly seek solutions to the problem of their achievement among those students themselves,” the report, released late last week, states. “But in reality, black students in good schools do well.”
Compared to the national averages, the state of Texas did well as a whole, although only 58% of black males graduated from Texas public high schools in 2005-06, and 74% of white males, the Schott study says.
That compares to a national average of only 47% of black males graduating, compared to 75% of white males – a 28% graduation gap.
At Fort Bend ISD’s 82% black male graduation rate was termed a “benchmark” for other districts to achieve.
However, the district didn’t fare as well in the discipline category. The Schott study criticized a national tendency toward giving black males a disproportionate share of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions.
At Fort Bend ISD, the study indicates that more than 29% of out-of-school suspensions in 2005-06 went to black males, while only 6.18% went to white males.
Also, the study said, black male students were classified as gifted and talented fewer than one-third as often as white male students, and were classified as mentally retarded nearly four times as often as their white classmates.
“If Black male students had been admitted to Gifted/Talented programs at a rate comparable to that of White male students, at least an additional 1,000 students would have been able to take advantage of those program resources.”
Officials with Fort Bend ISD couldn’t be reached Wednesday for comment.
