In Black America; The Retention of Black Students

Please subscribe to the channel, If you like this video please leave a big thumbs up and say hi to whoever you want to share so you can please subscribe Recently, Florida A&M University held their second national conference on black student retention in higher education. I'm John Hanson, join me this week on in Black America. It's very important for the secondary schools and the elementary schools to clearly understand what our students need to know and what it to be able to not only enter colleges in university but also to excel. The retention of black students in higher education this week on in Black America. This is In Black America. Reflections of the black experience in American society.

Black issues in higher education, the product of higher education, western journal of black studies, enrolled to Nafia, corporate headquarters, trained education weekly and we could go on and on. Are all crying out and giving us a message that our black students are at risk. Out of 100 black students in the first grade, it is said that 29% 59% will graduate from high school. 29% will enter college. 12% will complete college. 8% will enter grad school and 4% will

finish grad school. We do have a problem. Dr. Katina A Ford. Recently, Florida A&M University held their second national conference on black student retention in higher education in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference drew over 400 educators, administrators, researchers and students from 47 colleges and 56 universities. The objectives of the conference were to provide a national forum for the exchange of ideas and information. Give new insight into educational perspectives which relate to the problem and to provide opportunities to explore issues that influence the retention of black students in higher education. I'm John Hanson. This week, the second national conference on black student retention in higher education in black America. You know that despite the fact that we have made progress in higher education in

America since 1976, there has been an erosion of that progress and every year there is a downturn in the participation of black students in education. We know that despite the numbers, there is deficits in almost every aspect of the academic community. The fostering of programs that lend themselves to the retaining of the students that we do get into higher education is an awful important activity. That is especially so since today because of the

movement in improving the quality of education, both at the elementary and secondary level and at the higher educational level is that the most vulnerable citizens of the educational mainstream black students are certainly most vulnerable to those changes and we are seeing an impact with that. Dr. Frederick S. Humphries, president of Florida A&M University. This year's conference was a timely one given the declining number of black students remaining on college campuses to complete their college education. The second national conference on black student retention in higher education brought together administrators, faculty, students, researchers, and others who have a common interest in the educational black youth. One such person who has an interest in the educational black youth is Mary Hatwood Frutrail, president of the National Education Association. Mrs. Frutrail has demonstrated profound

national leadership in education. Mrs. Frutrail assumed the presidency of the NEA in 1983 and was reelected in July of 1985. Mrs. Frutrail's address focused on the need for a more unified educational system, quality in education at all levels, and the need to have more black students graduate. It's very important for the secondary schools and the elementary schools to clearly understand what students need to know in order to be able to not only enter colleges and university but also to excel. And so I think that the the articulation from the higher ed level to the elementary and secondary levels will give us a better understanding of what it is students need to know. I think secondly the partnership of working together, sharing information, providing opportunities for teachers who are in the elementary and secondary schools to continue to grow would also be a very important component of us working together. Having been a product of the inner-city schools there has

historically over the years counselors steering minority students to vocational courses instead of college preparatory courses. How is this going to change? It's going on now and it was going on when I was attending high school. As president of the NEA, how are you trying to alleviate this particular problem within our system? Well one of the ways to try to alleviate the problem is to make sure that there is a core curriculum within the elementary and especially at the junior high level so that all children coming through the first at least seven to eight grades will have a solid academic background. Then once they get to the direct high school, if they desire to pursue the academic track or the vocational track or the general track, they can do so but they will have a solid eight years or seven years of academic background and therefore they will be able to succeed whatever they do. I understand I realize all children don't want to go to college and some can't go but they all need that core background so as a result if they go to college, if they go to work, if they

go into the military, if whatever they decide to do, they will have a good education and that's how I think we address the problem. How is the current testing controversy or the testing issues of teacher across the board across the country particularly in Texas it's been kind of volatile but from your perspective as a representative of teachers. Well across the country 38 states are now requiring students to pass tests in order to enter the profession. There are only three which have required practicing teachers to take a test. The Arkansas, Texas and Georgia and Arkansas and Texas, the practicing teachers scored 97 99 percent respectively and so I don't think that that's going to be an issue in and along in those two states. Unfortunately the teachers who took the test and Georgia did not excel quite as quite as high a level so there is still quite a bit of controversy going on in the state of Georgia but one of the things I think that we have to understand is first of all students and our colleges and universities are going to have to pass examinations in order to come into the teaching professional medical

profession, whatever. We have a responsibility at the college or the university level to make sure they have the background to pass the test. Once these teachers come into the profession I don't believe we should test them. I think what we have to do is to evaluate them and to make sure that they are performing and you don't do that with a paper or pencil test. With the statistics you stated the minimum amount of minority students going to colleges and universities. The enormous amount of colleges in the university are trying to attract the most competent and qualified students and you want black colleges and white universities to work together. How is this mix going to be accomplished? I think that what we have to do and let's just look at the home's group proposal for example they are calling for more emphasis on research as it relates to a teacher training program and most of our black institutions or minority institutions and as well as our state institution don't have that research component so we're almost going to be forced to work together if we are going to continue to exist and what we have

said to the home's group for instance is that we believe it's wrong for you to call for 20 maybe 50 institutions to train teachers especially as you look at the fact that we will need 200,000 new teachers every year for the next 5 to 6 years and you must work with the state university as you must work with the traditionally black institution to provide those numbers and so you have the research component share your research with those institutions work with those institutions so that they will be able to continue to train and to prepare people to come into the profession otherwise the many of the black institutions will close down because they simply don't have the resources to establish the research programs which will be necessary so that's just one example of how we could work together. Why is it particularly important you mentioned you were at a conference in San Francisco of the business community making a commitment to our education institution and say yes there will be jobs available if you complete an education. One of the things we find in the schools is that many students will say to you why should I stay in school

because I don't have the money to go to college I can't get a job and they look around and they see their family their friends or whatever and they're not working or they're out here doing other kinds of things and you have to try to motivate them to stay in school and one of the ways to motivate them to stay in school is to say that at the end of your high school experience you will be able to get a job and you will be able to get additional training you will be able to to have a better life if that is what you want but you must stay in school and my point to the business community is that you have a vested interest in whether or not these children stay in school if they don't stay in school you're going to end up paying one way or the other you're going to pay through your taxes for more welfare are you going to pay for people who are unemployed you're going to pay for the people who are in jail if that's where they end up it's better to invest in them now and to invest in them by giving them a job that you have to invest because they can't get employment and therefore turn to some other means of survival and my point to them is that by investing in them they become productive citizens they know they have a

future they can buy a home they can buy a car they can go to college and they can have a decent life and it's to your benefit to invest in these young people the reception was very positive and it is being done by the way in Boston and New York I understand that some of the groups in San Francisco have gone to say to students if you stay in school and graduate we will give you a job I read in the newspaper on the way down here that the state of Maryland has decided that they will give every disadvantaged youth an opportunity to go to college or a job if they graduate from high school and that's motivation that's what they need in order to feel that it's worth my staying in school get an education what were the reasons behind you running for reelection last year for the NEA well I ran for reelection because I had a program that I wanted to implement and I had just begun to put it in place and I felt that if I could stay as president of the NEA for another two years and by the way I'm running for reelection this year because they did extend the term and so I will now be

able to serve for a third term and this is the first time in history being able to do that but I would like to see the Operation Rescue Program become more entrenched as part of the NEA I would like to see some of the programs or some of the initiatives we've taken to work with the higher education community to reach out to the to the larger community become more entrenched as part of NEA I would like to see us provide more focus to help at-risk children and to do more to train teachers and so those are some of the things that I want in addition to strengthening our political base and improving the the working conditions for our members and I've been very pleased with the response from the membership I think we're seeing some very positive results but I wanted to have an opportunity to see those become more ingrained within the organization. Successes and failures are the first term. I guess my successes would be getting the membership to go along with programs like Operation Rescue they voted to set aside $1.7 million of their dues money for this program to help children who would wear potential dropouts or had problems I think

another success would be getting the organization to be to talk more positively and to advocate more positively what we believe should take place in this reform movement instead of always focusing on the negative I think another success would have to be an increase of 170,000 members and looking for another 100,000 as I said this year the failure failures I've always been a workaholic and I've always believed in setting my sights high and trying to get that get there and some people say well Mary you have to understand you can't achieve all that you want to achieve within your tenure as some of the things will not come to fruition until after maybe you've gone out of office so my failure I guess would be that I haven't accomplished all that I'd like but I keep trying. The dropout rate is detrimental across the country particularly for for black for the black community. Hines we as educators citizens such as myself journalists and average Americans can deal with the problem of dropouts. I think there are a number of ways to try to deal with the

problem. First of all in the schools we know that there's information that will tell you that by the third or the fourth grade we can identify children who are going to drop out. Did you give an example? An example would be children who all of a sudden start acting up they start missing a lot of time from school they start falling behind they become behavioral problems so the signs are there. What can we do within the schools to identify those children diagnosed the problem and provide programs to help them on an individual basis overcome their efficiencies so that they can be more successful in school and therefore be able to stay. Another way we can happen is to have services available for not only the children but for the family and many times what you find is for instance that for child is the only one in the family who speaks English the parents will keep the child out of school so that if they have to go downtown the child is the one who's basically the interpreter not realizing that when you do that you cause problems. Sometimes the family doesn't know what services are available they don't know that they can their medical services they don't know that there are other financial services available to

help them so that they can help the young people stay in school so by working with the total community with those are the some of the things that we can do make that information available do a better job of diagnosis diagnosing but a third thing we can do which is very very small as individuals why don't we make it our business to work with the schools to work with the children and maybe go to the school and work with third graders and identify one or two children with whom you can relate and and and be a big brother or big sister and and be available when they need some help be supportive or supportive for them. Many children simply don't have the positive the strong support. Many children simply you know we came from poor backgrounds but we had people who really just hung in there with us and refused to let us give up. For many children they don't have that and I will totally agree with what President Humphrey said the black community 25 years ago was just that the black community and now we're so scattered it's very difficult for that family and

that community support to be there but it has to be there so we as individuals can give to our children by working with them in the church and the in the why and the boy scouts and in the school wherever we can work with them and I think it's crucial that we do that. In that same point something Dr. Humphrey said mentioned we grew up in a age of segregation now there in the age of inclusion or desegregation has that hurt us seemed like you said we ending an area of hopelessness we can't achieve we do not want to achieve. Well I think it depends on how you look at things. I was never raised to to look at the future to look at my circumstances as that's been absolutely destitute. I was always taught that you look at things from the point of view this is a challenge and I'm gonna overcome this challenge and I'm not gonna let my skin color my poverty my sex where I live be a detriment to hold me back and then and we were raised to always look at you can succeed but it's going to require a lot of

work you might not succeed the first time but you get up and you try again and I find that so many the children today simply don't have that and I don't know why they don't have it a lot of people say it's because parents work my parent work a lot of people say it's because you're poor mine were poor and and that's why I said earlier that many of us in the room could attest to the kinds of things that I talked about well why did we survive why did we overcome why did we succeed and many others did not and so I think that when we look at what is going on we have to understand that we can't allow excuses to hold us back and just because your poor minority doesn't mean you can't succeed but we need to make sure that we instill in our young people they can succeed and we're gonna help them succeed I always tell the students who came to me don't tell me about what you can't do tell me about what you can do and I will set the goals and I will help you meet those goals and if it means giving up my lunch period of staying after school or coming early then I will do that because if that's what it takes to help you succeed and if you're

willing to meet me halfway I'm certainly willing to meet you the other half along with analyzing public policies and their impact on black students survival we must also develop strategies for assuring that opportunities for quality education exists for all who want them and strategies to inspire more black students who apply to colleges and universities and finally we must develop strategies to help black college students not only enter college but to achieve with our maximum intellectual capacity but as an educator I am firmly convinced that we cannot design such strategies if we confine our thinking to institutions of higher learning we cannot meet the challenges confronting higher education without addressing the challenges confronting the entire American educational system kindergarten through graduate school and to increase student retention at the higher level we must increase educational quality and effectiveness at all levels of schooling because the problems that

lead students to do poorly in higher educational programs or to drop out all together begin when the student is much younger they begin in early childhood and elementary and in secondary school and I firmly believe that to meet the challenges that face them today institutions of higher learning must work more closely with elementary and secondary school personnel with other segments of the academic community to assure the students are prepared for college in the first place I firmly believe that we must create one unified system of education and stop saying what we have preschool and elementary school and junior high and senior high and then we go on to this post-secondary levels of education but we must look at education in America as a unified system of education providing an education for our people from preschool all the way through graduate school and beyond and without a good education our youngsters

will be unable to participate unable to participate in the political or business processes where the real decisions of our democratic society are made and furthermore today and for the foreseeable future job opportunities and all white collar fields and accounting finance law education and all knowledge intensive fields are increasingly highly competitive as such jobs are going only to those who meet the highest standards and have the highest qualifications only to those who have a top quality education and I believe that we have a moral and a professional responsibility to make sure that black people black students have the educational background to successfully compete for those jobs and not simply to compete but once they get the jobs to be able to move up within that particular profession and today and for the foreseeable future those

who do not have good good education will be relegated to dead-end low-paying jobs in America and these jobs will be in continual jeopardy because we are inventing machines that will constantly do more and better and will take over the jobs that are being held today by people who are functionally literate or semi-literate our nation is becoming more and more dependent on constantly changing technologies and in order to be prepared to adapt to constant changes young people need outstanding communications and interpersonal skills and they need excellent critical thinking skills skills that will enable them to analyze information evaluate situations and make created decisions skills traditionally gained through higher education and today some black students are achieving at high and higher rates of educational excellence the

SAT and ACT scores among black students are constantly going up reading and writing levels are increasing every year so we are making some progress and many students are reflecting that progress as president of the National Education Association Mary H. Frutrell has rekindled a new commitment for quality education for all students Mrs. Frutrell is the third black president of the NEA and she is the first black to serve on the NEA's new constitution allowing two-year terms she is currently serving her second two-year term since being elected in 1983 Mrs. Frutrell has launched a nationwide campaign to combat illiteracy and the school dropout problem she has often come out strongly against the education policy put forth by the current administration today Mrs. Frutrell is advocating a closer relationship between all levels of education it's our observation that across the breath of this land that there

is no one body other than the National Association for Equal Opportunity in our education that is speaking to the basic issues affecting a black progress and education in America and and there is a lack of of of conferences wherein the issue is what is happening with black students Dr. Frederick comfries president of Florida A&M University the landmark conference addressing the issue of retention of black students in this country's institutions of higher education convened last November in Lake Bunevista, Florida more than 200 educators administrators and researchers from historically black colleges and universities met to analyze the concerns of black student dropouts and share strategies for dealing with the problem since last year the conference has grown in scope and

in attendance to quench the thirst of educators and other professionals eager to develop the potential of young black minds found in our colleges and university throughout this nation Florida A&M University decided to undergo this task I asked Dr. Humphries why as we set on the campus and talked about that and as we read the reports coming about a dropout and especially in the predominantly white institutions where blacks were having a difficult time staying in school that erosion all of those things led in our mind and that if you did have a national conference on on black retention that there would be some interest in it now I have to confess that we have been overwhelmed with the interest all right we thought that there would be some interest but I think

these numbers not in these numbers I think we've been surprised by the level of interest in this problem and it boggled my mind last year when we were in Orlando the number of people came and then the second conference with the numbers that are here I mean you saw those numbers in that meeting this morning we've got a well-inaccess of 400 people here and all kind of representation so it is quite clear that the conference is dressing in an issue that's bothering a lot of people and they need to have some answers to to and they want to get some satisfaction from that and so I think that this has been a very worthwhile effort are the problems too full in as black student retention is on historically black colleges versus black student retention on historically white colleges no in this case I don't think the

issues are different okay they may differ in degree but they're not different the basic factors that influence black students staying in school I think fairly much the same in both environments except that perhaps in our environment because our retention rates are better we do manage it within the historical black colleges to get more students through to get them with an appropriate degree a baccalaureate degree we're much more successful than the predominantly white institutions and I think I have to do with the identification problem and the lack of social alienation which is perhaps a larger problem for black students on white college campuses that it is on a historical black college campus or predominantly black college camps I think that there is an identity I think there are no identity problems I think that there are no

social acclimation problems for black kids on on black college campuses but it is a problem for for black kids on white campus and so that's where they differ but in terms of the problem of sticking to an academic routine and having the required basic study skills to be successful in college I think those problems are the same the problem of financing the education the higher educational aspects I think those problems are the same for an institution and where we might have an age in terms of retention has to do with the social acclimation of the student and leadership and stealing confidence telling the kid that he's a first-rate person that he can achieve I mean I think that that kind of reinforcement is for greater at the historical black colleges universities than it is in a in a white environment and I think are terribly

important in helping kids to be successful in higher education. Dr. Fredrick S. Humphreys, president of Florida A&M University I would like to thank Dr. Katrina Ford conference coordinator for her assistance in the production of this program if you have a comment or like to purchase a cassette copy of this program write us the address is in black America longhorn radio network UT Austin Austin Texas 787-12 for in black America's technical producer Walter Morgan I'm John Hanson join us next week you've been listening to in black America reflections of the black experience in American society in black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station this is the longhorn radio network