By Edward Shore
African American males contend with a number of institutional barriers to success in school. These challenges include disproportionate dropout rates, high rates of expulsion and suspension, and limited access to special education programs. African American women encounter similar obstacles. Yet a recent Journal of Blacks in Higher Education study revealed a worsening gender gap in academic achievement among African American young people. In 2014, women accounted for nearly two-thirds of all African American bachelor degree holders. Black women were also seventy per-cent more likely to hold a masters’ degree and sixty per-cent more likely to earn a PhD. The black male education crisis has reached a tipping point. Unfortunately, academic research on the subject has proven difficult to locate online.
This fall, University of Texas College of Education professors Louis Harrison and Anthony Brown launched a new website, the Black Male Education Research Collection (BMERC). Their database offers an accessible, web-based repository providing policymakers, researchers, teachers, parents, and mentors with a comprehensive collection of scholarly articles from peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, and magazine articles that focus on African American males in higher education. UT graduate students Jessica Leitner and Alvin Logan compiled and synthesized new research on a range of topics, including African American males and psychological health, literacy, athletics, mathematics, and sex education. According to Dr. Brown and Dr. Harrison, the primary goal of the Black Male Education Research Collection is to challenge the ideology of meritocracy in the U.S. education system. They contend that the notion “if you work hard, you will succeed” has failed to take into account the stark socio-economic inequalities that have historically inhibited academic performance among poor and nonwhite students throughout the United States.
For instance, BMERC has highlighted new research by David Kirkland examining the critical role played by African American children’s literature in boosting the reading engagement of African American boys. Unfortunately, Kirkland discovered that this body of literature remains glaringly absent and underutilized in schools with sizable populations of black and nonwhite students. BMERC has also publicized a recent study authored by D.Y. Moore and J.L. Scott analyzing the stark under-representation of African Americans in gifted education programs, a disparity resulting, in part, from school administrators’ persistent failure to recruit black students.
By highlighting these and nearly one thousand additional articles about African Americans and performance in school, UT professors Louis Harrison and Anthony Brown have influenced a broader discussion about race and education reform. BMERC is supported by several offices at the University of Texas, including the College of Education’s Department on Curriculum Instruction, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, and the African American Male Research Initiative (AAMRI). AAMRI, led by Dr. Gregory Vincent, the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement, and featuring history professor Leonard Moore and recent history Ph.D graduate Cameron McCoy, has worked tirelessly to increase the four-year graduation rate for African American males at the University of Texas and to increase the number of black males attending four-year colleges and universities across the state. The Black Male Education Research Collection promises to advance these efforts by synthesizing and compiling academic research on African American education in one accessible and easy-to-use online database.