Black Student Achievement

In part I of this series of posts I shared the above photo of my sons, who at the time were in elementary school and middle school. I was inspired to continue this series in response to a discussion with a participant in a workshop session that I presented in January 2025 at the South Carolina Alliance of Black School Educators conference held in Charleston, South Carolina. While my workshop was not actually focused on increasing Black male achievement, during the question and answer part of the session, I made the statement, “Most Black males who are successfully navigating their way into high levels of academic achievement are doing so in spite of us rather than because of us.” I was challenged by one of the attendees, a former superintendent of schools, who admittedly had a long history of success at various levels of education. While I acknowledged his success, I remained adamant that his success was not the norm, a point which he continued to disagree with. Through these posts, I am sharing student achievement data, which paints a bleak picture regarding Black male achievement as Alfred Tatum notes in “Engaging African American Males in Reading:”

The field of education is saturated with studies documenting the poor performance and achievement deficits of African American males throughout their school years. National reading achievement data continue to indicate that as a group, African American males—particularly adolescents in middle and high school classrooms—are not performing well.

My goal in this series is not to convince anyone to do anything as the reality is that Black boys would be reading at higher levels if more people were concerned with their reading levels. If you are a superintendent, principal, teacher, coach, parent, community program director, youth pastor, or student—if you were concerned with the deplorably low reading levels of Black students (or if you are a student), you would be doing something.

As I wrote in the first post in this series, any of these people can blame someone else for the fact that the majority of Black students are not proficient readers as in the story of Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody:

Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did. Somebody got angry about it, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have.

So I am not trying to convince anyone to do anything. My goal is to help those who are interested in knowing just how tragically low the academic performance of our boys are and the actions they can take if they are interested in making a difference.

Let’s Begin with Reading

Reading is a foundational academic skill. It is how children make sense of the world around them, how to navigate from one place to another, how to cook a meal, how to repair a bicycle, and how to engage in virtually every other subject in school. Now, perhaps more than at any time in history, children have access to virtually any information through videos, podcasts, and social media. These mediums, together with text messaging, contribute to our children becoming less proficient readers and writers. They are simply receiving their information from sources other than reading.

The following tables of Black student performance in reading at 4th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade indicates that the percentage of students who are proficient or advanced readers decreases between 4th grade and 8th grade and is relatively unchanged by 12th grade with over 80 percent of students reading at a basic level or below at 4th, 8th, and 12th grades.

2022 Reading Performance of Black 4th Graders

2022 Reading Performance of Black 8th Graders

2019 Reading Performance of Black 12th Graders

Students who are reading at the basic level or below are ill-prepared to perform well in a college-prep high school curriculum, on the ASVAB in preparation for military enlistment, or to read manuals associated with any type of trade certification. Therefore, our concern must be to increase the percentages of Black students reading on a proficient or advanced level:

4th Grade:

• 14 percent of Black students are proficient in reading
• 3 percent of Black students are reading on an advance level

8th Grade:

• 15 percent of Black students are proficient in reading
• 1 percent of Black students are reading on an advance level

12th Grade:

• 16 percent of Black students are proficient in reading
• 1 percent of Black students are reading on an advance level

The data tells us that less than 2 in 10 Black 4th graders moving into middle school are reading at the level required to perform well in advanced middle school classes (which qualify for high school credit); less than 2 – 10 Black 8th graders moving into high school are reading at a level required to perform well in advanced high school classes (i.e., honors, AP, IB, dual enrollment), on the SAT/ACT exams, or adequately prepared to pursue career or college pathways. These assertions will become clearer as I examine NAEP math and science performance and ACT exam performance in future posts.

The EducationWeek article, “Researchers Created a Phonics Program With ‘Dramatic’ Results. How It Works” (Sarah Schwartz 1/17/25) notes:

Decades of research have shown that phonics instruction—teaching children how letters represent sounds, and how to blend those sounds together to make words—is the most effective way to get beginning readers to start decoding words. But on average, effect sizes in this research are moderate. Some programs work better than others. And that’s led to confusion about how much phonics to teach, and for how long.

As the “science of reading” movement has spread, at least 40 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation or enacted policies requiring that schools use evidence-based approaches to teaching students how to read. This almost always includes a mandate for systematic, explicit phonics instruction. Some states have issued lists of approved programs. In this landscape, identifying what works—and why—has taken on a new urgency.

While I appreciate the efforts of the researchers, my wife and I cannot help but to be amused by the “Dramatic” results discovered by these researchers, when over 25 years ago we introduced our sons to “Hooked on Phonics!” and advocated for phonics instruction at every parent presentation over the past 25 years. Our older son who has a BA in English from Amherst College is writing his first book, focused on essay writing. In a recent conversation he mused:

I remember that when I was in pre-k, mom worked with me every day with the ‘Hooked on Phonics’ tapes until I was a fluent reader. I also remember that throughout elementary school, she made me write down words that I either did not understand or had difficulty sounding out. She then made me write down the definition and phonetically how the word sounded. I also remember how she would have me write stories each week in which I used all of the words that I had written in my notebook during the week, which really helped me to become a creative writer and storyteller. Subsequently, I was reading on a high school reading level prior to entering middle school and entered Amherst College with a vocabulary comparable to that of private and boarding school students.

Want to Change Outcomes — Change Strategies

Step 1:The way to become a better reader is to read: If you have access to a program like “Hooked on Phonics” then use it. If not, just get some books and get started.

Step 2:Choose the right books: Rather than limiting the choice of books to so-called grade-level appropriate books, consider Alfred Tatum’s advice:

We need to shore up the resilience of African American adolescent males, particularly struggling readers attending public schools in low-income areas. Identifying texts that can shape positive life outcome trajectories for African American males—who constitute 7 percent of the school-age population (4 million of 53 million)—is a significant challenge. Must-read texts have four characteristics: They are intellectually exciting for both students and teachers, they serve as a roadmap and provide apprenticeship, they challenge students cognitively, and they help students apply literacy skills and strategies independently. More specifically, must-read texts should

• Engage students in authentic discussions in which they can analyze their realities in the context of the curriculum and discuss strategies for overcoming academic and societal barriers.
• Address students’ cognitive and affective domains, taking into account students’ cultural characteristics.
• Connect the social, the economic, and the political to the educational.
• Acknowledge that developing skills, increasing test scores, and nurturing students’ identities are fundamentally compatible.
• Resolve the either-or dilemma of focusing on skill development versus developing intelligence by offering challenges that satisfy both requirements.
• Serve as soft role models in the absence of physically present male role models by providing motivation, direction, and hope for the future and suggesting what is worthwhile in life.

In essence, Dr. Tatum is telling to identify literature that boys are interested in reading, whether about people, historical facts, societal issues, or learning a skill.

Step 3:Make a commitment: In my February newsletter I examined the importance of engaging in setting goals at the beginning of each school year; engaging in a mid-year assessment and setting goals for the second semester of the school year; and engaging in a year-end assessment and planning classes for the next school year. Any teacher, parent, coach, mentor, faith leader, or community leader should be able to understand how these 3 moments in time, during each school year from kindergarten through the 11th grade, should reveal if Black boys are proficient readers, while providing 36 opportunities for intervention.

Step 4: Create a Book Club: One school created a “Back Pack Book Club” where students were responsible for always having a book in their back pack and reading quietly before school and after lunch. Another school created book worm visuals with each student setting a goal as to the number of books they would read each week. Our college planning cohort in Guilford County Schools began as a Black male book club.

Every organization working with Black students, albeit an athletic camp, fraternity, sorority, Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, Links, Jack & Jill, etc. should create a book club. Select books pertaining to your core mission, whether it your mission is focused on study skills, etiquette, career planning, social development, character development, or leadership. In this manner, you will easily identify struggling readers and have the opportunity to make them better readers and communicators. While hands-on learning is the first developmental area of learning, reading is the foundation for navigating all areas of learning in K-12 education in preparation for what comes after high school..

Step 5: Read Aloud: To ensure reading proficiency, students must read aloud so that you can hear how they are sounding out words, grasping concepts, and developing reading comprehension.

Step 6: Establish Your Expectations: Expect less social media engagement and more reading engagement. Require students to write book reports or to provide narrative summaries of their reading.

Step 7: Incorporate into All Learning: Incorporate reading into all learning by engaging boys in reading video game instruction books; schedules; product descriptions; and food labels. In essence, connect anything that they want to reading.

Step 8: Develop an At-home Library: Collect books and develop a library so that students have easy access to books and encourage students to identify favorite authors and genres. Consider 3 of my books to kickstart an at-home library:

• Don’t Quit — Inspirational Poetry
• Follow Your Dreams: Lessons That I Learned in School
• The Eagles who Thought They were Chickens

Step 9: Develop a Vocabulary Book: Use a composition notebook to record words that a student has difficulty pronouncing or does not know the meaning. Write down the definition and phonetic spelling. Use the words to create stories.

I believe that anyone charged with teaching, raising, or mentoring Black males should read my bookEmpowering African American Males: Teaching, Parenting, and Mentoring Successful Black Boys.

ISBN: 978-1880463-69-7
Publication Date: 2007
8.5 x 11, 416 pages | $24.95 

Click here to purchase