Giving Compass' Take:

• The Oakland Unified School District’s African-American Male Achievement initiative was able to significantly reduce the high school dropout rate of black males.  

• The effort was successful because it implemented targeted support for students of color through affirmation and engagement.  How can donors help schools potentially replicate this program across districts? 

• Learn about philanthropic support for black male achievement. 

An Oakland initiative aiming to better support black male students substantially reduced their high school dropout rate, according to a study released Monday.

The research is good news for efforts to offer culturally relevant teaching and targeted support for students of color. It follows a study from the same pair of researchers — Stanford professor Tom Dee and Emily Penner of the University of California, Irvine — who found that participating in an ethnic studies class in a San Francisco high school substantially boosted students’ attendance and grades.

“What those studies have really underscored for me is the promise of educational strategies that focus on affirming students, making them feel belonging, making them feel critically engaged in the classroom,” said Dee. “For many historically marginalized students, schools feel highly alienating, and I think both programs work to remediate that.”

The paper focuses on the work of Oakland Unified School District’s African-American Male Achievement initiative. “The district was disproportionately under-serving black boys,” said Chris Chatmon, a former teacher and principal who led that work and now advises the district’s Office of Equity. “When you looked at all the positive academic indicators, black boys were at the bottom.”

To help address that, a number of Oakland schools added classes during the regular school day that were taught by black male educators and meant for black boys. The class served as the center of a new peer group for students, used a curriculum that emphasized black history and culture, and offered personalized career and college guidance.

“This report will give policy folk, superintendents, and school boards the kind of framing and quantitative data … to begin to adopt programs like African-American Male Achievement,” said Chatmon.

Read the full article about supporting black male achievement by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.