We know that black boys learn differently than their white peers, and even their female counterparts. What’s needed now are concrete ways to address these differences and come up with a solution to better learning experiences.

Good report, something that is well known especially with teachers like myself who has 31 years of experience mostly at the high school level. I will argue though that the problem deals more with gender and not culture. I dispute the way you present your percentages, I need to see a percent of black males and white males with similar socioeconomic values. You cannot compare inner city low socio black males with affluent white suburb males. Let’s compare apples to apples no matter the color, they must be apples. THE PROBLEM IS THE DISENGAGEMENT OF MALES IN PUBLIC EDUCATION ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE POOR. Our public schools would rather drug young boys who can’t sit in their seat for 8 hours, rather than examine poor teaching methods and teachers who just want you to “sit down and be quiet!” When that teacher closes her door, she becomes the dictator, a nice positive one who understands testerone and boys need to learn tactically, and those who only understand the way THEY learned, quietly and well mannered. Well, we don’t teach robots, but with drugs they can act as robots. I went to a predominantly black school and have taught/ coached at upper middle class white schools and poor inner city schools. Males learn better in an active, competitive, incentive driven environment where group learning is advantageous, and distractions ( girls) need to be seen in the hallways and not the classroom. I had 3 classes of all males in Biology at an inner city school. The majority of them were classified as low achievers and troublemakers by previous biology teachers. I got administrative approval on keeping them all male, divided each class into 4 directional groups, used food and sports as incentives, gained their trust, and my classes passing rate on Texas state tests was the highest of all teachers in our 5 high school district. It is politically incorrect to say boys are being disadvantaged by teaching methods in schools. But it is the truth.
Coach Bear

We need to understand just how our differential treatment of boys to make them tough is creating the Male Crisis and also very poor reading and motivation to read. Those very few boys who are more supported will do fine in reading and excel in school – and use the academics as their coditional ticket to love and honor from society to keep striving in school. However, the majority of boys will not be given this more correct treatment.
To understand this, “we must redefine our average stress as many layers of mental work we carry with us that take away real mental energy leaving less mental energy to think, learn, concentrate, and enjoy the learning process”. This differential treatment creates very real differences in learning by individual and by group.
The problem involves two entirely different treatments of Males and Females as early as one year of age and increases in differential treatment. This is creating the growing Male Crisis. The belief Males should be strong allows more aggressive treatment of Males as early as one year, designed to create more layers of agitation, fear, and tension, so they will be prepared to fight, defend, and be tough. This is coupled with much “less” kind, stable, (very little verbal interaction) and less mental/emotional/social support, knowledge, and skills for fear of coddling. It is this more aggressive, less supportive treatment that creates the toughness or maintained, higher average layers of – anger, fear, anxiety, preparation for defense, etc. This remains in the mind as higher average stress that take away real mental energy needed for academics. This increases over time and continued by society from parents, yes teachers, and others in society. This creates more social/emotional distance/distrust of others -parents and other authority figures who have knowledge; lags in communication, lower social vocabulary, poor sentence structure; also higher average stress: more layers of mental agitated conflicts and fears taking away real mental energy that hurt learning and motivation to learn. This also creates more activity due to need for stress relief from their higher average stress. It creates more defensiveness and wariness of others further hindering emotional and social growth. The higher average stress creates higher muscle tension (creating more pressure on the pencil and tighter grip) that hurt writing and motivation to write (hurting form and creating early fatigue). It creates much lag in development due to lack of care creating a learned sense of helplessness in school. This differential treatment continues through adulthood, almost fixing many Males onto roads of failure and escape into more short-term areas of enjoyment. Also society gives Males love and honor (essential needs for self-worth) only on condition of some achievement or status. This was designed to keep Male esteem and feelings of self-worth low to keep them striving and even give their lives in time of war for small measures of love and honor. Males not achieving in school or other are given more ridicule and discipline to make them try harder. Support is not an option for fear of coddling. Many Males thus falling behind in academics then turn their attention toward video games, and sports to receive small measures of love and honor not received in the classroom. The belief boys should be strong and the false belief in genetics creates a mental denial of any connection with differential treatment and the lower academics, lower esteem, and other problems, removing all good sense when it comes to raising boys today. I feel there is an almost emotional cannibalism allowed upon Males by society, even young Males who appear weak, all to make them tough.
Note, it is not just about feelings and more openness that is needed as it is more support and care in general from infancy. Remember it is the aggressive treatment that is increased for any sign of weakness and much wariness they feel for others, especially adults (parents and teachers) who feel it necessary – and more freely allowed to use more aggressive treatment for any sign of weakness or vulnerability.
As for reading, we need high social vocabulary, social experience with sentence structure, and “lower average stress to perform the abstract skill of reading: decoding, visualizing, organizing, reaching back into our social vocabulary to learn new words in print, and enjoying the process. Boys are deprived in these areas due to much less care, interaction, and more aggressive treatment in general. This hurts reading and motivation to read.

There can be many answers as to why black boys aren’t reading. I believe we need to look at motivation first, and the answers will follow. I don’t recommend this as a process for teachers to take to task, but as a function of social work to address ‘issues’ outside of education which are typically the roadblocks to motivation. I’d even argue that reading should not be considered a teachable subject as are language and grammar, which are needed in order to read. People don’t need to be able to read in order to communicate with others at even the most infantile level. Language is the predecessor. Many black boys’ especially of poverty believe they get by just fine with common street utterances. They get their point across when they need to. And that may be good enough–for some. For others who are motivated yet have difficulties learning, alternative teaching methods can be applied individually and not of the one-size-fits-all variety. Beyond this, there has to come the realization by government, administration, teachers and parents that success is measured differently–high and low–and not every student will see reading proficiency as the only road to success.