Naomi's Program of Excellence: Addressing the Black Achievement Gap

The fact that both children—one black and one white—were bypassed by the special program was not automatic proof of educational parity in the system in the Cherrys' mind. The Cherrys reasoned that they knew their child. He was very smart—so smart, in fact, that when he entered the 1st grade at Summit Park Elementary School, he was skipped into the 2nd grade. In contrast, they knew nothing of the aptitude or performance of the teacher's child, nor had she supplied any such information. Instead, she had simply offered his family association as the only pertinent aspect of his profile. Case closed.

What was pertinent to the Cherrys, however, was the fact that in this majority black, middle-class public school, they were rediscovering the disappointing pattern they had hoped to avoid by the transfer: Their intelligent black child was bored and understimulated scholastically, and teachers had few alternatives to offer besides the conventional curriculum. Despite teachers' promises to supply extra assignments, these dissipated over time despite continued parental pressure. The Cherrys feared that in such an educational environment, their child was likely to replicate a familiar pattern—the problem of black academic underachievement.

Understanding the Issue

Although black underachievement has often been understood as an inner-city, lower-class student problem, recent research conducted by cultural anthropologist John Ogbu validates the Cherrys' anxieties. Ogbu found that black student underachievement in the comfortable Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights cut across class lines to affect black children from middle-class backgrounds. The Cherrys live in Rockland County, N.Y., a decidedly middle-class suburb north of New York City. A 2003 survey of blacks in Rockland County revealed that 56 percent of adults claimed individual incomes exceeding $70,000 and that 73 percent were homeowners.

The Cherrys and their black, suburban neighbors with elementary-age youngsters felt they had reason to take extra steps to ensure their children's academic success. Several of the black families not only had their own disconcerting stories to tell about their experiences with local schools, but also were familiar with another study, by Edmund Gordon, investigations of the performance of students of color in Rockland County's schools. Gordon's comprehensive studies provide breakdowns of performances among various minority groups by race and ethnicity or national origin. Thus blacks are compared to Asian Americans and Hispanics, for example; black students of Caribbean descent are compared to African American students. Gordon confirms that, even in relation to other minority groups, black students demonstrate a pattern of low achievement. This was the very situation that the Cherrys and company were determined to prevent, especially since they resided in the one school district in the county, East Ramapo, with the largest concentration of black children and the largest number and proportion of underachieving black pupils.

Taking Action

Using homemade flyers and word-of-mouth, the Cherry family, along with several friends, devised and advertised a learning program to bring black community forces to bear on closing the performance gap in the academic careers of their children. During the summer of 2002, they implemented a five-week course for 14 students ages 4–12 from eight families. The parents developed the curriculum and tutored one another's children. Each session rotated through one of the family members' homes on a weekly basis.

The focus of the initial summer program was on reading, writing, arithmetic, and speech, with some social studies work for older students. The parents made every effort to keep the learning fun. The children would complete math equations while doing a relay race, for instance. The success of the program led Cherry, Pamela Charles (a black local principal with her own elementary-age children), and others to develop a 12-month extracurricular program beginning in the summer of 2003. The program was called Naomi's Program of Excellence (NPE), named after the Cherrys' deceased daughter.

The urgency of their intervention was enhanced for NPE participants when the March 2003 overview of district performances in English language arts, mathematics, and science, supplied by the New York State Education Department, revealed the general lagging performance of Rockland County's black pupils for the previous two school years. Indeed, the East Ramapo District had the poorest showing for black elementary school-age children.

But among NPE families, all of whom lived in Rockland County, the news about student performance for the 2002–03 school year was positive. NPE parents reported that literally all (100 percent) of participating children were “meeting” or “exceeding” standards set by statewide tests that year. Just the year before, only 48 percent of the East Ramapo district's general black elementary-age student population did so and only 78 percent of the district's white children were at that level. Assuming that district 2001–02 scores remained fairly constant in the following year, NPE children were outscoring both their white and non-NPE black counterparts. Such results have spurred interest in the program and at least 10 families are on a waiting list to participate.

Today's NPE has expanded its content offerings beyond the academic component that formed its foundation. NPE parents now provide their children with opportunities for year-round exposure to both general cultural events and black cultural events. Students would take a field trip to see a dance performance of The Nutcracker, for example, as well as an Alvin Ailey dance performance. Students are also required to pursue a special interest, skill, or hobby outside of school. Swimming, horseback riding, tennis, art classes, and piano are among some of the choices NPE participants make. NPE includes community and volunteer activities for its students, such as visiting nursing homes to do arts and crafts with the elderly or preparing Thanksgiving baskets. Finally, NPE insists on parental involvement in the public and private schools of NPE children and looks forward to extending its links to local schools.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Without a prior knowledge of Ogbu's work when they started, NPE organizers in fact directly addressed the reasons Ogbu identified as the cause of black student underachievement—a culture of educational underachievement among black pupils and their families.

Where Ogbu found a “low-effort syndrome” among black students, some NPE students report their excitement when they are assigned extra homework because they believe it's an indication that the teacher thinks they're smart. Whereas black respondents in Ogbu's study negatively associated school success with “acting white,” NPE students are surrounded with like-minded, high-achieving black peers who, almost uniformly, find learning to be fun and something to be done with friend. And while Ogbu found that black, middle-class parents were either too busy to involve themselves in their children's school lives or trusted the school to ensure their children's steady educational progress, NPE parents initiate contact with teachers, join parent-teacher associations, and develop additional school-related activities for their kids.

Indeed, through participation in Naomi's Program of Excellence, black children and their parents in Rockland County appear to be staving off the specter of black educational underachievement.