New Curriculum Focuses on Helping Black Teenage Boys Succeed

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A new school curriculum has been created to work on the academic and social achievement gap between black and white kids. Youth Communication Inc. publishes essays, stories, pictures and other projects created by teenagers and has developed the Real Men Resource Kit. The kit contains a full curriculum, called Real Men: Urban Teens Write About How to Be A Man, as well as an activity guide and a film based on one teen’s success story. The curriculum, which schools must purchase ($375), provides stories and lessons written by young black men who talk about breaking out of stereotypes and achieving their goals. Here’s a sample:
“Now that I’m about to graduate from University Heights, I realize that many things about it have helped to make me a better person.

Report Urges Feds to Focus on Why Black Teenage Boys are Failing in School

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The Council of the Great City Schools is calling on the  federal government to do something about the academic and social achievement gap between black and white kids. “Black males continue to perform lower than their peers throughout the country on almost every indicator,” says the groundbreaking report A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools. The study focuses on six areas in black kids' lives, including readiness to learn, in-school experience and college/career preparation. Here are a few things the report found:

One out of every three black children lived in poverty compared with one out of every ten white children in 2007. Black or poor students attending public school were more likely to be held back during their K-8 school career than their classmates.