Narrative Continued: Self-Confidence

There are many factors that affect how we feel about ourselves and about our abilities. When students are put in a position that undermines their abilities, there is research suggesting that self-confidence is one of the first causalities of failure. In the context of school and particularly math classes, where African American girls are preconditioned to feel as academic outcast there are additional reasons to feel inadequate.

Jae Hoon Lim (2008) quotes in her article The road not taken: Two African-American girls ‘experience with school mathematics, that the educational structure of our schools “help to maintain the status quo while marginalizing or disqualifying certain groups of people, such as women, minorities and members of low socioeconomic classes from positions of influence in society.” Research suggests that when you couple cultural identity with the current structure of our schools, girls are prevented from being motivated toward positive feelings (or having confidence in) math. With African Americans (across the diaspora) comprising less that 1% or all mathematicians and of this 1%, only 25% are women (State University of New York at Buffalo) students don’t have the options to see many role models and therefore could deduce that the possibility of their success in the field is negligible at best. According to the 2009 AMS report the percentage of underrepresented minorities graduate math students has been the same (10%) from 2004 thru 2009. This is not encouraging for increased representation of women or minorities at the primary or secondary school level where the motivation to teach is not bolstered by benefits such as tenure or treasure. Yes we do have some women of color in the field like Tasha Innis and Sherry Scott Joseph but these women are few and their influence is not very wide. Makes me wonder just how many individuals have been tracked out of the math field because they were female or belonged to a minority group.

In the same article Lim quotes Ogbu and Simons’ research that historically because of their race/ethnicity, groups have been “denied their intellectual capacities and potentials”, resulting in the defense mechanism of any oppressed group to their oppressor. Resistance. This resistance has come in the form of non-compliance, discipline issues (lack of respect) withdrawal and active/vocal dismissal. Every oppressed culture or group has had to develop means of survival. And as Freire points out “there may not be life or human existence without struggle and conflict” (Freire, 1997). Our African American students are struggling as well, for their academic future.

I have looked at Seattle Public schools with over 47,000 students to analayze data about minority groups, how many African American students stick around to graduate to have their potential tapped and to look at the districts report card on standardizing testing math scores. We will look at numbers on the graduation and drop-out rate of African Americans and draw conclusions on these students self-confidence.


African Americans: Graduate or Drop out?

The OSPI gathers the cumulative dropout rated for the entire state each year. In the 2009- 2010 school year, African American (or Black) students had the third highest dropout rate in the state (25.5%) yet they were only 2,703 of the 60,835 graduates’ statewide (Ireland, L. 2010). A student who is not in class cannot learn and certainly can’t keep up with their math. What is more disturbing is the dropout rate for African Americans is greater than for students in special education, low income, and migrant or on 504 plans (p. 20).

In the graduating class of 2010, the Seattle Public Schools reported a total of only 829 Black/African American students with a dropout rate was significantly lower, 6.5%, than in years before. This would appear to be a low percentage but when compared against other ethnicities and races African Americans student had the highest percentage of them all. Of these 829 enrolled African American students, 436 or 52.6% graduated in four years but 259 or 31.2% had dropped out by the end of the school year (this is a cumulative number using adjusted class numbers). It’s important to know what criterion is used to identify a student as a dropout.

“… A dropout is defined as a student who leaves school for any reason, except death, before graduation or completion of a program of studies and does not transfer to another school. An individual is a dropout whether dropping out occurs during or between regular school terms. A student who leaves during the year, but returns during the reporting period (including summer program) is not a dropout (Ireland, L. 2010).”

Why does it matter if or how many students of color or African Americans drop out of school? When a student routinely see their friends disappear or have had family members join this group, they are disenfranchised and affected by this pattern of departure and this in turns affect their motivation for school in general. This lack of motivation will affect all subjects but with math this can be especially egregious because it is a cumulative discipline and can be extremely difficult to catch up once the pattern of learning is broken. When a student has to “make up work” to catch up, it is a small step to lose your self-confidence and retreat to the cultural and stereotypical expectations of your ethic group.

Math Scores

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) issues a report card on how students are progressing on several academic markers including math. Looking at the math scores there was some interesting data. From what I could discern these are not reported or disaggregated by race or gender but if we were to look at each school, their minority enrollment statistics and low income reporting it would be possible to pull hard data. However for this entry we are going to look at the numbers district wide and make an educated assumption on how this might break down by race/ethnic group using anecdotal information.

The State of Washington and SPS have been using the WASL to address the federal NCLB standard with mixed results. There is wide consensus that the test is flawed as are most standardized testing because they are based on standards that do not take into account extraneous influences like family dynamics, social economic status, gender, poor teaching, inadequate instructional training or numerous other distractions.

Statewide 54.2% of 3rd thru 8 and 10th graders passed their WASL in math. In the state there are 672,350 white students and 56,790 Black/African American students just under 10,000 (9,704) of them in the Seattle Public Schools. The data indicates that African American are 8.6% of the total student population and Whites are 64.8%. If we take the percentage of students in all grades that passed the test and apply that percentage to the two racial/ethnic groups, then 363,069 or 54% White students passed the WASL and 30,666 or 53.9% African Americans passed (http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?schoolId=100&OrgType=3&reportLevel=District&year=2009-10).

District wide 60.3 % of all high school students passed the math portion of the test. This means that 40 % did not. Using the same formula as we used with the State numbers – there are 20,506 White students and 9,704 Black/African American students. If 60.3% of ALL students passed and we used that number to generalize the percentages of White and Black students who passed the math test, then you would think that 12,300 White students and 5,820 Black/African American students passed . But this is not true. When you add gender and ethnicity, the actual numbers reported are 47.9% of all females passed and 16.3% of African Americans passed – the lowest percentage of all ethnic groups (Asians 53.4%, Latinos 30.4%, Native Americans 29% and Whites 69.8% (http:www.seattleschools.org/area/sisi/distsummary/2009/distcur.pdf).

These numbers and percentages look good for females but not for African Americans. Only 16% of all African Americans compared to almost 70% of all Whites passed this test last year. Not all of this is about race but it appears to be a big influence.

Where did Self-confidence go?

The historical educational inequality that parents experienced passes on from generation to generation and has the potential to greatly influences a students’ perception of their abilities especially in a discipline that is historically inflexible to experiential learning. These parents who had negative school experiences specifically with math are likely to pass on a discouraging attitude and accept their child’s belief that they are math incompetent or unaware that there are other ways to be math successful (Lim 2008).

If we couple the lack of parental support and loss of your social group through dropout or tracking, you create an unsafe place for students of color to risk moving out of their comfort zone and out of the lower level math classes. When all these come together, and sometimes you only need one of these deterrents, I believe it’s safe to say this has an effect on a students’ self-confidence and consequently their ability to compete in classes that required taking high risks to succeed.

Lim (2008) further points out that when you have the added dimension of teachers using observation of students as part of their assessment for higher level classes, African American students will not fare well as they do not operate as the model student – quiet, independently motivated and self-contained. The African American students’ “cultural frame of reference” to learning mathematics “entails a particular set of dispositions…such as working in support groups, accepting a free and expressive body movement and using a conversational style discourse in an instructional situation (Lim 2008).” The classroom set up to allow this cultural frame will go a long way toward a self-confident African American math student and dispel the feeling of self-inadequacy when faced with a challenging course.

There are women that have achieved the highest academic math status of PhD. But even some of them like Sherry Scott Joseph have had to overcome race and gender to become tops in her field. In speaking with Tasha R. Innis, another math professor she was quoted:
“ it is discouraging that there are so few women and minorities in mathematics and that progress in graduating more minority Ph.D.s has been so slow. The fighting doesn't stop. You still have to prove yourself,"

Etta Hollins (2010) sums it up in her letter to teachers Contextualizing Teaching and Learning:
“Through observation and interaction with my students I have come ot realize how much teachers influence the development, even transformation of their students as person. When a teacher is able to create a social context in the classroom in which each student feels accepted, appreciated and valued, students develop self-confidence and a sense of belonging as a member of the group.”

Reference

AMS. (2009) Retrieved from http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/2009Survey-Third-Report.pdf. (p. 1307).

Black Women in Mathematics (2008) Retrieved from http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/scott_sherry.html

Freire, P. (2007) Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Hollins, E. (2010). Contextualizing teaching and learning. In M.C. Fehr & D.E. Fehr (Eds.). Teach Boldly! (pp. 182-187). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Ireland, L. (2011). Graduation and Dropout Statistics for Washington in 2009-10. Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Olympia, WA. Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/dataadmin/pubdocs/GradDropout/09-10/GraduationDropoutWashington2009-10.pdf


Lim, J. H., (2008) The road not taken: Two African-American girls’ experiences with school mathematics. Race Ethnicity and Education, 11:3, 303-317. Retrieved 6 April 2011.

Seattle Public Schools. Seattle, WA. Retrieved from http://www.seattleschools.org/area/siso/disprof/2010/DP10edstat.pdf


The Mathematics Department of the State University of New York at Buffalo. (1999 Jan). Retrieved from http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/wmad0.html