Panel to explore why black students lag peers

Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2009

As the upcoming inauguration of the nation's first black president reshapes America's debate on race, the state Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to create an "African American Advisory Committee" to ask why black students lag so far behind their peers.

The committee's race-based mission drew praise as well as criticism and confusion.

"Clearly we need to focus on where the greatest need is, and that's where the greatest need is," said state board member Greg Jones. "Some people might find that a little bit politically sensitive."

Critics questioned the need to isolate one racial group for study when other groups - Latinos and Pacific Islanders, among others - also sit on the wrong side of the achievement gap.

The name suggests the issue is a "black problem," said Fred Harris, director for the Center on African American Politics and Society at Columbia University.

Yet, he said, there are probably systemic problems at play - poverty and low education levels of parents, for example - that may not have much to do with race.

Ward Connerly, a former UC regent and a prominent opponent of affirmative action, said he believes the problem is based on cultural attitudes about education and that creating the committee was a "segregated approach to educating black kids."

"On the one hand it's goofy to be doing this at this point in American history," he said. "On the other hand, we do have a problem."

African American students score lower than virtually every other student subgroup, including English language learners and, in some cases, special education students. More than a third of African American students drop out of high school, according to state estimates.

"I deeply believe that you have to directly acknowledge and focus on the struggles of African Americans if we are going to successfully change the status quo," said state Deputy Superintendent of Schools Rick Miller, who applauded the creation of the committee.

The problem and attempts to solve it aren't new.

Schools have done desegregation; they tried affirmative action. Later, the president promised to leave no child behind. Civil rights lawyers, in the meantime, have sued over inequality in classrooms. And politicians have promised to do better.

Yet even as America is about to swear in its first black president, California has created a committee to ask why African Americans lag so far behind everyone else in school.

Brenda Stevenson, chairwoman of African American Studies at UCLA, said the question is appropriate.

"We haven't solved it," she said. "That's very clear. Everyone knows there's a problem. We have to figure out how to fix it."

In recent years, hundreds of books have been written on the topic of African Americans and public education, yet public officials have tended to shy away from addressing academic achievement in racial terms.

"Everybody talks about this forever," said Jones, president of State Farm Mutual Companies and a Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointee to the state Board of Education. "I want to get focused on solutions."

Jones acknowledged the board could have called the committee something more politically correct.

"That might make people feel a little bit better," he said. "But we know that African American students are suffering. They are being challenged."

The committee will include researchers, parents, teachers and community members who can bring solutions to the table, efforts that are already working somewhere, Jones said.

The state advisory group, in name at least, harkens back to a task force created by the Oakland Unified school board a little more than 10 years ago.

The Oakland Board called it the Task Force on African American Students.

The committee came up with a new approach to black students: Ebonics. It encouraged the local school board to adopt a language curriculum policy that became the subject of national ridicule.

"That's not going to happen," Jones said laughing at the comparison. "I assure you."

The 11-member state Board of Education is appointed by the governor and serves as the governing and policymaking body of the California Department of Education. The vote to create the committee was 9-0.

E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle