Let’s Improve Education For Black Female Students

What happens when an entire population has been largely absent from the discourse around public education? Unfortunately, this has happened to girls of color, and it has fueled assumptions that they are doing just fine and has allowed the significant barriers they face in school and life to go unaddressed.

"Unlocking Opportunity for African-American Girls: A Call to Action for Educational Equity," a new report from the National Women's Law Center (where I work) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, takes a comprehensive look at the many impediments to African-American girls' educational success and the poor educational and economic outcomes many girls face.

The findings are disturbing: Because of pervasive, systemic barriers in education rooted in racial and gender bias and stereotypes, African-American girls are faring worse than the national average for girls on almost every measure of academic achievement.

In sharp contrast to reports of the academic success of girls overall, African-American girls are more likely than any other group of young females to receive poor grades and be held back a year and are less likely than any other group of girls, except Native American girls, to complete high school on time. The report also documents the close connection between these school outcomes and bleak economic futures for African-American students as a whole.

Of the many roadblocks to success that the report examines, the disparities in school discipline stand out. Although the numbers of African-American girls traveling along the school-to-prison pipeline have been growing, their experiences have only recently been documented. We now know that 12 percent of African-American female students are suspended from school, a rate six times higher than that of white girls. African-American girls are routinely punished more harshly than white girls for the same offenses, and are often suspended from school for minor and subjective offenses like "disobedience" or "disruptive behavior."

Research suggests that stereotypes of African-American women as hypersexualized and aggressive may form the basis for the implicit bias that shapes teachers' views of black female students and their behavior. Teachers may not even be aware that they are more likely to penalize African-American females than white girls for conduct, including fighting, that defies widely held stereotypes about what is appropriate “feminine” behavior.

Schools’ overly harsh responses to African-American girls’ perceived defiant behavior fail to take into consideration the underlying causes of the conduct at issue, which for some girls include exposure to trauma, violence, abuse, or other toxic stress from living in poverty and being confronted with racism and sexism. For African-American girls who have been victims of violence, trauma, and harassment, behavior considered to be aggressive may simply be a predictable response to victimization and unaddressed mental-health issues. When schools provide these students with trauma-informed services and support—instead of pushing them out of classrooms and schools—these students engage in the classroom and reap the benefits.