“Far too many students are not benefiting from the progress we are making,” Henderson said at a news conference at the remodeled Ballou High School in Ward 8. “It’s a very real, very urgent problem.”
The push is part of a citywide effort under Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who took office this month, to improve equity and increase opportunities for young men of color. The effort also reflects work by President Obama to secure private funding to help keep male minority youths in the classroom and out of prison.
Other urban districts also have begun to focus on minority males to reduce the achievement gap or address skewed discipline statistics or stereotypes, all issues that have been magnified since the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August. School districts in Minneapolis and Oakland, Calif., have offices dedicated to black male achievement.
Under the “Empowering Males of Color” initiative, the District plans to open an all-boys college preparatory high school in the heavily minority area east of the Anacostia in 2017. Henderson has enlisted the help of Tim King, a former classmate at Georgetown University and the founder of a high-performing Chicago all-boys school, Urban Prep Academies, to open the school.
For the next three years, Henderson also will focus funds from the Proving What’s Possible grant program on individual schools’ efforts to enhance the academic, social or emotional development of black and Latino male students and to work to engage their families.
The District plans to recruit more minority teachers and has put out a call for 500 new volunteers by the end of this school year to tutor individual students in reading and to serve as mentors. By fourth grade, nearly half of the city’s black and Latino male students are reading below grade level, and officials hope that an army of volunteers can help improve their performance.