Do Black Lives Matter to Higher Education?

by Tracy Lachica Buenavista, California State University, Northridge and Maria C. Ledesma, University of Utah

We have been charged to write a blog to be distributed to and read by students and colleagues in the field of higher education. The intention behind the blog is to engage educational researchers to better understand, consider, or address a contemporary topic, as well as the way in which we might approach our work. If we are lucky, our blog might inspire others to think more deeply about their own work. Thus, for our blog, we want to call attention to higher education scholars and practitioners to think about why Black lives matter and how their work reinforces (or does not reinforce) this sentiment.

Omnipresent in contemporary debates around police brutality, surveillance of black and brown bodies, and the myth of the American Creed, is higher education. Take for instance the following contemporary moments of social injustice that prompted rampant protests regarding the devaluation of Black lives.

Michael Brown was just 18-years old when he was chased down, shot, and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Before his murder, he was on the verge of beginning his postsecondary career at Vatterott College – a proprietary institution with notable donors such as Mitt Romney and with a history of targeting low-income and working class students of color. While debates emerged regarding the relevance of Brown’s college plans amidst police violence against Black bodies, we feel it is important to acknowledge his higher education aspirations in context of the dismal postsecondary opportunities for Black Americans. We question the way in which Brown’s aspirations were used to assign increased value to his life, and the ways that for-profit institutions prey on hope, while offering only limited opportunities for communities already placed at risk.

Martese Johnson, a 20-year old student at University of Virginia, suffered a head injury after he was unjustly accused of public intoxication and using a fake I.D. to enter a bar frequented by UVA students. He was brutalized by officers with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), an entity responsible for regulating the state’s alcohol industry and policing alcohol crimes, and with similar enforcement powers as police officers. Johnson’s victimization became national headlines only after video was released that captured the graphic violence ABC officers unleashed against Johnson as he bled and pleaded with his perpetrators. Johnson, who is an active student leader on campus and a member of various honors organizations, reminded us that the racial macroaggressions committed against students of color in postsecondary contexts are not divorced from the larger maltreatment of Blacks in the U.S. History reflects how, too often, Black lives are considered expendable. And how their absence in higher education is pathologized to blame the victim rather than questioning and holding accountable the very systems that produce such disparate outcomes in the first place.

Freddie Gray was 25-years old when he was illegally arrested by police, subjected to a fatal spinal cord injury, and died while in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland. Gray is the latest high profile victim of police brutality. Indeed, in the course of the last year the death, or more aptly, the murder of Black lives has become a type of public spectacle. Whether by T.V. or computer screen, anonymous voyeurs tune in to bare witness, albeit from a safe distance, no accountability necessary, to stare at state sanctioned violence. Unpleasant truths are easy to ignore if these are not your reality. But once you see them, once you know of them, are they not your responsibility?

In response to Gray’s death, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels released a statement calling for an investigation into Freddie Gray’s death. Among other things, he said, “Our university takes seriously the opportunity and obligation of our role as an anchor institution within Baltimore. But as the events of the past week remind us, there is more to do.” Echoing President Daniels, we also believe there is much for us in higher education to do to emphasize and teach how and why Black lives matter. Such a task belongs to us all, not just to faculty of color or to African American and/or Black Studies Departments. Black lives matter across all fields and disciplines; they matter just as much in the sciences as in the humanities. If we are to live up to higher education’s democratic aspirations, Black lives should matter to us all.

Indeed, if the Black Lives Matter movement is to be more than hashtag social activism, we believe that we in higher education also bear a responsibility to ask ourselves:

What is the state of Black lives on your campus? 

Do Black Studies exist on your campus? 

How is the diversity of what constitutes Blackness reflected in the curriculum and programming at your institution? 

(How) Are Black students, faculty, staff, and administrators being recruited and retained? 

What are the ways in which your institution socially, politically, and materially supports Black students, faculty, staff, and administrators? 

What relationship does your institution have with Black communities if at all?

What have you done to respond, address, and/or participate in the Black lives matter movement? 

How has this movement informed or inspired your work?

We challenge you to think about how you, your community, or institution, are concretely working to answer these questions and to make Black lives matter on your campus. We acknowledge that addressing injustice can be overwhelming, however small acts are as important as revolutionary actions. And, in the end “what you allow is what will continue.”

Organizational Change and Survival through Collectivism and Critical Agency Networks

by Judy Marquez Kiyama, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of Denver

Earlier this year I attended a scholarship dinner aimed at raising funds for a local community-based organization. The venue for the dinner, like the organization itself, was in the center of a low-income/working class, Latina/o community.  This particular organization focuses on making higher education accessible regardless of immigration status. As I took in the powerful stories and community activism that permeated the event, I looked around and realized that there were people sitting at each table who have been active and present in my own educational journey since my transition as an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona. These same people remained active, present, and engaged over time and were here supporting another equity-based educational cause. And the network has grown; this dinner included supporters from multiple education institutions, professionals in the community, family members, and children.

Fast forward a few months and I found myself back in this same community collaborating again with a university-based outreach program that works with K-5 families to provide college access information in an effort to cultivate college-going practices. The program partners with a local school district, once again rooted in a low-income/working class, Latina/o community. I quickly realized many of the same people who are responsible for the development and sustaining of this particular outreach program were also in attendance at the scholarship dinner. The program has cultivated cross-departmental collaborations inclusive of faculty, staff, students, and K-12 administrators in ways rarely seen in higher education organizations (see Kiyama, Lee, & Rhoades, 2012). Jenny Lee, Gary Rhoades, and I have termed these groups “critical agency networks.” These networks are relational, activist in nature, cut across different department cultures and administrative silos, and work towards organizational, equity-based change.

The particular outreach program referenced above is in its 12^th year and has served over 1000 families. The program must patch together resources and operates on a minimal budget that has not increased over the 12 year period. In an interview with a school district administrator, she emphatically declared that this college outreach program has transformed the school district as students at every grade level have the aspirations and knowledge to make college a reality. My reflections left me with many questions. How does a program with minimal resources sustain this type of impact over time? Likewise, how does a program of this sort sustain within a rapidly changing organizational context? More importantly, what do the lack of financial and human resources allocated to outreach efforts signal about the land-grant purpose of this public institution?

It is no longer shocking news to hear that state aid for public higher education has been drastically reduced. Earlier this year Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin revealed the plan for a $300 million cut in state support for higher education. Arizona also proposed major cuts in state support, drastically reducing funding for the flagship universities and eliminating funding for some community college systems. It is no surprise that institutions are exploring new ways to generate necessary revenue as a response. In an era of drastically diminishing resources and an abundance of neoliberal practices, how do we sustain the public, land-grant missions of these institutions?

There is no arguing that financial resources matter. However, within the particular institutional and community context that much of my research has been situated, there exists a critical, collectivist network. These collaborations continue to sustain outreach and equity-based programming despite these drastic state reductions in support, despite increases in market-like behaviors, and despite the organizational changes that have occurred at the institution over the last 10 years. Oversight for the program comes from mid-level managerial professionals (Rhoades & Sporn, 2002), yet faculty play a key role within the network.

This leads me to more questions. Are collectivist, critical agency networks one response to neoliberal policies and practices? Collective action around a need for organizational or political change is not new.  In the 1960s and 70s, the women’s liberation movement and women’s consciousness-raising groups were focused on the need for political change (Weiler, 2003). Astin and Leland’s (1991) research points to similar examples of the networks women created through professional organizations to fight for gender equity. Similarly, Hart’s (2007) work establishes the powerful role of women academics and their collective partnerships with university and community leaders to transform the academy across academic disciplines.

While the narratives above highlight individual outreach efforts, the research that I’m doing underscores the role of the networks associated with sustaining these outreach programs and the necessity of consciousness-raising through collectivism, not only for political change but for organizational change and organizational survival. These collectivist groups are developing and growing because of grassroots, bottom-up efforts (see Kezar & Lester, 2009, for more on grassroots change and leadership), all with the common goal of equity and social change in education. Given the cross-disciplinary role of faculty in these networks, I’m left wondering, will we see enhanced collective efforts on the part of faculty in response to reduced support and increasing market-like demands? What might this look like across different faculty lines and across different institutional types? Can critical agency networks and collective action become sources of support, a way to cultivate consciousness-raising, and ultimately, a means to demand organizational change?

Earlier blog posts by Ryan E. Gildersleeve (January 2014) and Jay Dee (July 2014) emphasize the need for a broader focus of research, one that explores issues of higher education organizations, administration, and leadership. Sam Museus (February 2014) called upon the importance of coalition building and collective action. Likewise, Gary Rhoades (2014) has stressed that collective agency needs to be part of a larger research agenda on professionals as “collective agency is central to catalyzing institutional change” (p. 925). Thus, together with my colleagues, Ryan E. Gildersleeve, Sam Museus, Gary Rhoades, and Gerardo Blanco Ramirez, we will explore some of these issues in an upcoming AERA session. We aim to talk not only about a broadening research agenda, but the impact of neoliberalism on faculty life, and the responses to it. We hope that you will join us for: Neoliberalism and Faculty Crises in Higher Education: The Market State, Knowledge Economy, and Professoriate (Sat, April 18, 10:35am to 12:05pm, Swissotel, Event Centre First Level, Zurich D). We will be live tweeting during the session using the hashtag #facultycrises.

References

Astin, H.S. & Leland, C. (1991). Women of influence, women of vision: A cross-generational study of leaders and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Dee. J. (2014, July 13). Organization, administration, and leadership: Addressing the relevance gap in higher education research. Community of Higher Ed Scholars, blog of AERA Division J.

Gildersleeve, R. E. (2014, January 16). Building a research program of consequence in the study of higher education (or, thinking beyond student-focused research). Community of Higher Ed Scholars, blog of AERA Divison J.

Hart, J. (2007). Creating networks as an activist strategy: Different approaches among academic feminist organizations. Journal of the Professoriate, 2(1), 33-52.

Kezar, A. & Lester, J. (2009). Promoting grassroots change in higher education:  The promise of virtual networks. Change,  41(2), 44-51.

Kiyama, J.M, Lee, J.J. & Rhoades, G. (2012). A critical agency network model for building an integrated outreach program. The Journal of Higher Education, 83(2), 276-303.

Museus, S. (2014, February 4). (Re)envisioning a collective agenda focused on systems and transformation in higher education. Community of Higher Ed Scholars, blog of AERA Division J.

Rhoades, G. (2014). The higher education we choose, collectively: Rembodying and repoliticizing choice. The Journal of Higher Education, 85(6), 917-930.

Rhoades, G. & Sporn, B. (2002). New models of management and shifting modes and costs of production: Europe and the United States. Tertiary Education and Management, 8, 3-28.

Weiler, K. (2003). Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. In A. Howell & F. Tuitt (Eds.), Race and higher education: Rethinking pedagogy in diverse college classrooms (pp. 215-242). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing Group.

From March Madness to March Sadness

by Lori Patton Davis, Division J Affirmative Action Chair and Associate Professor of Higher Education & Student Affairs at Indiana University

The month of March has been rightfully referenced as “March Madness”. March marks the month in which the nation’s top teams square off against one another for an opportunity to compete in the NCAA Championship game, also known as “the big dance”. For the last several years, the city of Indianapolis has hosted the NCAA final four and championship games. Residents of Indiana and people from across the country descend on the city of Indianapolis, IN to partake in an exciting time, whether their brackets were correct or not, as Division 1 teams face off to determine which will take home the coveted honor of being the nation’s top collegiate athletic team in the sport of men’s basketball.

As festivities are underway, the state of Indiana is not only in the spotlight due to the NCAA tournament, but also due to the tremendous media attention and outcry over the state’s passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). While several other states have RFRA laws, Indiana is the only state in which the law can be used to support one’s religion in defense of their decision to discriminate. In other words, an individual or business owner can refuse services to anyone they deem as placing undue burden on their religious freedom. This bill has the capacity to “increasingly take the form of private actors, such as employers, landlords, small business owners, or corporations, taking the law into their own hands and acting in ways that violate generally applicable laws on the grounds that they have a religious justification for doing so” (Legum, 2015). The largest outcry associated with this bill has mainly focused on the opinions of critics who argue the bill will foster discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and Trans* communities.

Since Governor Pence signed the bill, several groups have been outspoken about its inherently discriminatory nature, as well as its poor reflection on the state of Indiana, its legislators and supporters of the measure. Organizations (e.g. NASCAR, NCAA, NBA, Indiana Pacers), higher education professional associations (e.g. ACPA, NASPA, ASHE) and Indiana Colleges and Universities (e.g. Indiana University, Butler, Earlham, Ball State) have all issued statements in opposition to the bill or any measure that would legalize discrimination. Some Indiana businesses are protesting the bill and posting visible signage to let potential customers know they believe in inclusivity and welcome all customers regardless of difference.

I am vehemently opposed to Indiana’s RFRA legislation. However, my opposition to this bill does not differ in any substantive way from my opposition to all forms of inequity that are fostered within higher education. As I think about the many college-educated leaders, lawmakers and elected officials in the state of Indiana, I can’t help but wonder how different their leadership might look had they been sufficiently educated at their respective institutions of higher education. Year after year (century after century), students experience the revolving door of college; that is, they enter with little knowledge of privilege, oppression, difference, equity and often leave with their same biases and misconceptions unchallenged and unchecked. In our Responding to the Realities of Race Monograph, Shaun Harper and I (2007) contend:

It is entirely possible for students to graduate from college without critically reflecting on their racist views, never having engaged in meaningful conversations about race, and using racially offensive language unknowingly. When issues of race do emerge, many people, whites in particular, are disinterested and argue fatigue. They are tired of talking about it. Tired of hearing about how racist, alienating, and devaluing the campus is. Oftentimes, educators are responsible for letting students and ourselves off the hook rather than engaging the conversation and the necessary subsequent action. (p. 2)

Whether the emphasis is race, gender, sexual orientation, class, or some other marker of difference, at some point we as educators must begin to seriously grapple with the fact that our institutions are failing college students when it comes to educating them about oppression and inequities and how they and we are complicit in the very inequities we claim to disrupt. Yes, I’m saddened about the passage of Indiana’s RFRA; but I’m more saddened when I think about the numerous learning opportunities that these legislators and those following in their footsteps miss during their collegiate experiences. The bottom line is that our institutions are not doing enough to challenge our students and engage them critically in ways that not only expose them to oppressive ideologies but also assist them in building the capacity to recognize and disrupt them regardless of what they pursue post-graduation.

I am encouraged by the public stance taken by the leaders of many Indiana colleges and universities. The predominant theme among these presidential messages indicates a commitment to diversity and inclusivity and firm opposition to discrimination of any kind. However, our institutions must move beyond the message toward actionable strategies that ensure espoused values are translated into enacted values. Despite the inequities embedded in the academy, I believe institutions of higher education can be transformative spaces. I encourage readers to consider how they might challenge themselves and others to not only speak out when issues such as Indiana’s RFRA emerge, but also to challenge our how we think, conduct research, teach courses and engage in service on a daily basis. We must consistently ask the hard questions: How does my contribution to higher education fuel the (mis)education of students? How am I co-implicated in the way this (mis)education shows up beyond the academy in societal structures that reproduce oppression and inequities? And How will I do better?


References

Harper, S. R., & Patton, L. D. (Eds.)(2007). Responding to the realities of race. New Directions
  for Student Services, no. 120. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Legum, J. (March 20, 2015). The big lie the media tells about Indiana’s new “religious fredom’
  law. Think Progress. Retrieved from
  http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/03/30/3640374/big-lie-media-tells-indianas-new-
  religious-freedom-law/

Individual Diploma Value & Academic Public Good

by Christopher S. Collins, Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University

Recently a group of students earning an MA in student development approached me for an interview to fulfill a class assignment.  Their task was to explore the value of higher education after watching the documentary, The Ivory Tower.  Before giving the graduate students my perspective, I asked students what they thought about the value of higher education.  They all had confidence that higher education was still a good investment, but the increased costs, loans, and difficulty in getting a job was shaking their confidence.  In general, I find that blanket statements about the value of higher education are not useful.  Put differently, if an individual asks, “Is higher education worth it?” a “yes” or “no” answer without knowing the context of the questioner should be viewed as suspect.  However, certain economic models show that students with a bachelor’s degree earn around 1 million USD more during their lifetime than their peers who have less than a baccalaureate (Baum, 2014).  In strict economic terms, this is the largest aggregated way to defend the value of a higher education.  However, contextualizing individual interests, majors, family background, and many other characteristics complicate the value proposition—thus making blanket statements difficult.  In any given week there are alarmist perspectives shared in a variety of news outlets about the declining nature of higher education.  Similarly, wealthy business personalities tend to make headlines by either paying students not to go to college (Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal) or claiming that there will be a bursting of the college bubble similar to the housing market (comments made by entrepreneur Mark Cuban).  Like all institutions, higher education must continue to evolve, but it is highly unlikely that the value of a degree is going to be cut in half the same way many homeowners saw the value of their homes evaporate.  Human, cultural, and social capital is distinct from physical capital like real estate.

I asked the groups of students conducting the interview about whether or not there was anything missing from the value equation of student costs and lifetime income possibilities.  I was fishing for an answer outside of the value to individuals, but did not achieve my goal of evoking any notions beyond an individual rate of return (earnings over a lifetime compared to the cost of tuition plus time away from the job market).  I went on to explain to the students how an intense focus on individual rates of return will fail to capture the greatest benefits that higher education has to offer society.  Colleges and universities generate public good through knowledge production and educating the masses.  New forms of knowledge that solve social and economic problems are benefits that the public can accrue without ever attending a class or earning a degree (see Collins, 2012 for a case study example).  Over the previous thirty years, the trend in higher education has been to privatize the knowledge instead of making it publicly available, which may be a threat to the ability to claim that knowledge production is part of the public good (see Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004 for a full discussion of the increasing market-like behavior of postsecondary institutions).  A postsecondary educated mass of citizens tends to be more civically engaged, healthier, generate income and pay taxes, and is less likely to be incarcerated (McMahon, 2009).  As a result, educated citizens tend to be less of drag on public resources and contribute to social progress.  This collective state is another source of public good and is distinct from the value of a single degree to an individual (McMahon, 2009).

McMahon (2009) made a strong case that under-recognition of the public good will likely lead to underinvestment in higher education.  Each of the fifty United States is financially more stable than during the 2008 financial stress.  However, only two states have returned to pre-recession funding levels for higher education (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2014 Report on State Spending).  Arizona is currently the worst state for funding higher education and the UC system is looking at a 28% hike in tuition without additional state support.  With the ballooning of loan debt, individuals and families are becoming increasingly wary about the means to get a degree.

In the 1980s a fascinating and troubling trend was spreading through global higher education—due to a strict individual rate of return analysis, higher education was considered a poor investment for developing countries.  As a result, in order to get loans for development projects from healthcare to infrastructure, nation-states had to consent to a menu of items called Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs).  One item on the menu was the disinvestment of public funds for higher education in lieu of a more robust investment in primary education (due to the rate of return analysis indicators that primary education was a better investment).  Higher education systems suffered in developing countries due to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund SAPs.  Years later a task force called the policies and rate of return analysis narrow and misleading in that it did not account for the social and public benefits of higher education (World Bank, 2000).  Although the full story is much longer (see Collins 2011), it is interesting to see how a rate of return policy had a large impact around the world.  The magnitude of the impact is enough to warrant consideration about the importance of how the value of higher education is framed—not just for individuals, but also for the public.

In an era of obsession with precision and measurement, it is important to note that social rates of return and the public good are not easily quantified and there is no agreed upon approach (although McMahon, 2009 has done good work in an attempt to provide greater detail about the social benefits).  Articulating the centrality of the public good mission proves to be an easier task than understanding the degree to which the mission is being fulfilled.  According to Bowen (1977),

The outcomes from research and public service cannot be measured with any precision, and so conclusions will inevitably be subjective and judgmental.  It is possible, however, to describe these activities in some detail.  Indeed, a mere recital of them strongly suggests they yield important benefits. (p. 291)

Simultaneously acknowledging the contextual nature of the task and the importance of thick descriptions of public good activity is a critical task for higher education.

In Chicago, at the AERA Division J Vice Presidential session on April 17 at 10:35 a.m. in the Siwssotel Room Zurich D, a screening of the documentary Ivory Tower will be shown followed by a panel discussion including Donald E. Heller, Liliana M. Garces, and Lorelle Espinosa.  The documentary, in concert with the panel, will provide an excellent opportunity to discuss the future and value of higher education as well as the larger purpose that, according to Marginson (2012), is a prerequisite for survival.


References

Baum, S. (2014). Higher education earnings premium: Value, variation, trends. The Urban
Institute.  Retrieved March 1, 2015 from http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413033- Higher-Education-Earnings-Premium-Value-Variation-and-Trends.pdf

Bowen H.R. (1977). Investment in learning: The individual and social value of American higher
 education. Baltimore MD; The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Collins, C.S. (2012). Land-grant extension as a global endeavor: Connecting knowledge and
international development. The Review of Higher Education, 36(1), 91-124.

Collins, C.S. (2011). Higher education and global poverty: University partnerships and
the World Bank in developing countries. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

Marginson, S. (2012). “The ‘public” contribution of universities in an increasingly global world.
In B. Pusser, K. Kempner, S. Marginson, and I. Odorika, eds. Universities and the
Public Sphere: Knowledge Creation and State Building in the Era of Globalization. Pp.
7-26. New York: Routledge

McMahon, W.W. (2009). Higher learning, greater good: The private and social benefits of
higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state
and higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

World Bank. (2000). Higher education in developing countries: Peril and promise. Washington,
DC: The World Bank.

Why we need to smash up the concept of the achievement gap in tiny little pieces: Underserved students need a little less conversation, and a little more action

by Andre Perry, Dean of Urban Education at Davenport University

It’s time for researchers to stop using terms like the achievement gap and student success. The sobering data on men of color in colleges is a reflection of college and university performance – so take the scrutiny off of student achievement.

Outcomes for male collegians of color are lagging because postsecondary leaders aren’t held accountable for changing them.

This month I attended Ensuring Success for Men of Color: Leveraging Evidence to Drive Better Policy, Practice and Effective Investment hosted by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. Heads and representatives from national, university based centers, institutes and think tanks came together with funders and postsecondary officials to “reframe” or “change the narrative” of men of color in college.

The frequency in which data on black and brown male collegians have been framed almost precludes the need for me to repeat, but I will for the sake of argument. Black and Latino men four-year graduation rates are 33.2 percent and 44.8 percent respectively. Their white and Asian male peers graduate at a 57.1 percent and 64.2 percent clip.

In response to data, a swell of academic literature has the “effect of centering the lack of success of young men of color as the defining commonality…and contributions [of men of color] as exceptional, not expected” (as stated in the conference proceedings).

Common titles like Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life and Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Educating Latino, Black, and Asian Students insidiously deemphasize institutional responsibility for graduating men of color and as a consequence, measures of institutional accountability based on inclusion are ignored. The authors of these and similar texts acknowledge and deconstruct institutional factors. However, we mitigate our efforts comparing black and brown weakness to supposed white strength. We undermine our cause when we try to fix black and brown boys and men of color.

If scholars want to rid themselves of deficit approaches (looking at weaknesses) moving forward, then we must stop using the deficit language in our speech and research. Acceptance of constructs like the achievement gap, drop out, student success and data driven may legitimize you in the academy, but they are complicit in promoting the verbal and statistical rhetoric that avoids the problem of institutional accountability.

The inferred white male referent in the achievement gap construct contributes to the centuries old logic that others should be compared to whites. On its face the idea of student success lets institutional factors of the hook, which have been shown to be at least half of the reason why men of color are pushed out of college. Educators shouldn’t be data driven. We should be community driven and use data to support them. These distinctions aren’t some semantic ruse. If scholars want a revolution in how students are treated in the academy, then we must be willing to question how data has been used to facilitate poor outcomes among black and Latino male students.

An aside — The term achievement gap is so ubiquitous that it’s hard even to find an analogous search term expressing institutional failure. Don't offer up the trendy catch phrase opportunity gap, which is barely a milquetoast alternative. Reframing the issue means that researchers must abandon antiquated constructs. Smash up the concept of the achievement gap in tiny little pieces.

Creating more research that narrates the lived experience of men of color is important, particularly for members of the group, but we don’t need another study explaining who we are to higher education leaders who aren’t listening. To quote James Baldwin, “...you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.”

And to be clear, the underrepresentation of black men in higher education isn’t a result of a lack of data or knowledge on the subject.

Yet even at a conference dedicated to reframing the narrative, you could readily hear the infamous, “more research is needed.” These are famous last words for most social problems addressed by university researchers before those problems are lost in committee.

An alternative approach would be heighten scholarship and scrutiny on things like  school/university holding power (aka retention), affordability, institutional cost per degree, employment of graduates, campus racial climate, or we can rely on the reliable institutional discrimination, racism and/or bias as well as campus graduation rate and student satisfaction.

There are some scholars who have turned the idea of student success on its head. The report Black Male Student Success in Higher Education incorporates the voices of men who have succeeded in college (in spite of their institutions) to locate problems and solutions. This is radical step indeed. As conference participant Sharon Fries-Britt said during a panel discussion, “We need to be comfortable talking about successful men of color…it’s not an anomaly"

Scholars, this should be the last time you read or write anything with achievement gap in the title. Black men need more justice than comparisons and juxtapositions.

Really, how much student level data do we need before black and brown minds matter? It’s long been established that many supposed good colleges aren’t so for men of color. Consequently, if scholars don’t hold institutions of higher learning accountable in our research, who will?

Reprinted with permission from the Hechinger Report from the original blog on February 17, 2015. You can read more commentary from Andre Perry at http://hechingerreport.org/author/andre-perry/

Our College Choice: Uncovering a Familial- and Culturally-Based College Decision-Making Process

by Michelle M. Espino, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park

My research interests regarding institutional cultures as well as community contexts that affect and inform educational achievement, outcomes, and experiences along the P-20 pipeline for racial/ethnic minorities are based on uncovering and addressing my own journey as a Chicana, middle class, first-generation college student who is the first in my extended families to obtain a doctorate.  My work focuses on countering deficit-based models about Latina/o students and their families because I believe that various forms of community cultural wealth as well as limited forms of the cultural capital valued by the dominant culture enhanced my journey through higher education (Espino, 2014; Yosso, 2005, 2006).

During my childhood, my parents and extended kin shared wisdom around the kitchen table that moved beyond formal schooling and centered on our family’s cultural assets.  These stories helped me understand my role within the family, and what was possible and appropriate within familial and cultural contexts (Espino, 2007).  My family’s stories and consejos (advice) imparted upon me an intergenerational investment in my educational success and personal development.  I learned that being bién educada meant that my morals and values were foundational rather than supplemental to my formal education (Auerbach, 2006; Valdes, 1996).  Personally and professionally I honor the imaginative aspect of agency embedded within the stories shared through my work as a scholar, as well as my lived experience as a Chicana, a daughter, and an aunt.  A year ago, the intersections of these identities unearthed tensions between lived experience and scholarly discourse that have profoundly changed my perspective on college access and choice.

Last spring, I was on a conference call with my parents.  My nephew, whom they had raised, was ready to make a decision about which university he planned to attend: one of my alma maters or the university where I work as a faculty member.  I was nervous.  The universities had been pared down from eight institutions that we had researched together based on location, prestige, and his career interests—some of these schools had already made their choice about my nephew, much to our disappointment.  As a first-generation college student, my own college choice seemed a bit happenstance and I believed that providing an organized and methodical approach would prove less arduous for my nephew and our family.  Because I was the only one in my family with a college degree and because I had research and professional expertise in the field of higher education, my parents expected that their investment in my formal education and their (in)direct influence on my college aspirations and trajectory (Ceja, 2004) would eventually lead to educational opportunities and success for my nephew.  As Alvarez (2010) noted, Latina/o families often direct questions and concerns to their older children or other family members who have attended college: it was my turn to give back.

True to what I understood as a higher education scholar, I intended to provide my nephew with a range of options with a resulting college choice that he would make independent of me and his family that reflected his hard work and effort.  I wanted to believe that the research I had read about college choice would accurately reflect my nephew’s decision-making process.  Rather, what I uncovered were moments when my parents and I collaborated to steer his educational development from preschool through to the AP courses he took in high school.  Interactions with teachers, negotiations with school administrators, and imparting our expectations and hopes for my nephew around the kitchen table had been carefully orchestrated and deliberated among the three of us.  Our focus increased in intensity after we enrolled him in a summer college preparation program at my home institution before his senior year in high school.  While he stayed with me, we talked through the college admissions process and, in the fall, scheduled weekly meetings to talk about his applications and scholarship forms.  At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve we submitted his federal financial aid application, knowing that this was critical structural opportunity for someone who qualified as an independent student.  My parents and I collectively held our breath with anticipation and a touch of sadness.  My nephew decided to move across the country to the university where I work.  His choice, although seemingly made independent of his family, was an outcome based on a series of choices that my parents and I had made and through which he (re)negotiated to achieve his (and our) goal of attending college (Martinez, 2013).  His college choice was actually our college choice.

As I observe my nephew’s college experience unfolding, I return to this moment when our family’s hard work and effort, our prayers and aspirations culminated in this one decision—part of which was made by him, by us, and for us by those who do not look like us or share the same experience as us.  Choices are being made, but with little regard for families and communities.  I am troubled by college choice models that offer logical and linear processes within nested contexts that do not accurately reflect what happened and is happening in our lived experience as a family connected across culture, faith, and love.  College choice models do not reflect the systemic and symbolic violence within educational institutions along the P-20 pipeline that is occurring against Communities of Color, low-income communities, and those who are most marginalized.  How can college truly be a choice for these (my) communities, if there are significant academic preparedness and achievement gaps that make the pathway to college, at best, an uncertain endeavor?  Can choosing among colleges (if even a possibility for some) truly be a choice when institutions are not culturally engaged or responsive to the needs of Communities of Color?

I argue that what is missing from our research on college choice is that we do not draw attention to the extent to which social and institutional structures narrow or widen the pathway to college and resulting choice(s) based on prescribed notions of merit, need, and fit.  As institutional agents, we do not necessarily consider how collectivist orientations operate within and among immediate and extended kin who bridge the worlds of academe, community, and culture so that the best decisions can be made with the full support of family and community.  College choice models lead us to believe that there is individual choice, without interrogation of the sorting mechanisms and institutional policies and practices that result in predestined choices.  Choices have already been determined by the values of admissions counselors, by bureaucracies that make it difficult for first-generation students to navigate, and by state and national policies that preclude some from making any reasonable and logical choice.  Yet, we still believe that these choices are our own.

College choice models in their present form do not reflect the aspirational and familial forms of capital that my family brought to the kitchen table every day of my nephew’s young life and over the phone each night in those final moments of high school when he and I reviewed essays and searched college websites.  His final decision was a communal choice, an amassing of all of our knowledge from lived experience and formal education to offer him choices that he would then get to consider and name for himself.  Based on my lived experience as a scholar, daughter, and aunt, I call for a different way of thinking about college choice, which is little more than a “cruel fiction” when considering the lived experiences of students of color and low-income students (Corbett, 2007, p. 30).  We need to conceptualize a new, culturally relevant model that looks less at choice as if this is a freedom and more at how bounded choices are forced upon students through their secondary schooling that may not even lead to college and beyond.  We must interrogate how choices are siphoned off by the very stratified system that purports that students would actually make a choice about a) going to college and b) choosing among many schools with little regard for the economic and emotional impact that leaving one’s home can have on both the individual and the community.  We must hold our institutions and ourselves as institutional agents accountable to not just make space for the marginalized but to evaluate the imposition of values that privilege some and marginalize others, that theorize choice and persistence, that support some on their educational journeys and shut others out.

When I reflect on the circumstances that brought me and my family to this point and when I consider my role in supporting my nephew’s pathway to college, I realize that my college-educated background was not just a factor to be added into the equation.  Along with my family, I helped to construct the pathways that my nephew now follows.  As a family, we offered guidance and reflection, and drew upon our community, familial, and ancestral resources to guide him on his path.  His choice was our choice.  His success will be our success.


References

Alvarez, C. L.  (2010).  Familial negotiation of the Latina college choice process: An   exploration of how parents and their daughters obtain and utilize information to navigate the process.  Enrollment Management Journal, 4(4), 57-80.

Auerbach, S.  (2006).  “If the student is good, let him fly”: Moral support for college among
Latino immigrant parents.  Journal of Latinos and Education, 5(4), 275-292.

Ceja, M.  (2004).  Chicana college aspirations and the role of parents: Developing educational
resiliency.  Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 3(4), 338-362.

Corbett, M. J.  (2007).  Learning to leave: The irony of schooling in a coastal community.
Halifax: Fernwood Publishers.

Espino, M. M.  (2007, November).  Working in the field: Different perspectives on Mexican
parental involvement and college aspirations.  Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education: Louisville.

Espino, M. M.  (2014).  Exploring the role of community cultural wealth in graduate school
access and persistence for Mexican American Ph.D.s.  American Journal of Education, 120(4), 545-575.

Martinez, M. A.  (2013).  (Re)considering the role familismo plays in Latina/o high school students’ college choice.  The High School Journal, 97(1), 21-40.

Valdes, G.  (1996).  Con respeto: Bridging the distances between culturally diverse families and
schools.  New York: Teachers College Press.

Yosso, T. J.  (2005).  Whose culture has capital? A CRT discussion of community cultural wealth.  Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

Yosso, T. J.  (2006).  Critical race counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano educational pipeline.  New York: Routledge.

Difficult times require difficult conversations

by Stephanie Waterman, Associate Professor at the University of Rochester

Don’t shoot

On my way to teach class on November 11, 2014, I passed a group of students protesting the grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. I was concerned for the students’ safety on a wet, very dark, and cold evening. I went to class with worry.

Tuesday nights last fall semester I taught College Access and (In)equity for graduate students in our higher education program. This class was a mix of master’s and doctoral students, with one teaching and curriculum doctoral student. On this night, I devoted the entire class time to discuss “Ferguson.” I felt the class would need to process the grand jury’s decision and its implications. Students were troubled, the room somber. As we all work with college students, and higher education administration and staff, I felt it absolutely necessary to discuss what happened. We cannot ignore what’s happening outside the ivory tower. To do so ignores populations of students and communities that most of our institutions claim to support. Our higher education students work with the college population who were outside protesting. Their students will have questions; they may want to process with us. Their colleagues in offices such as residence life, Greek life, and in academic support may also want to process. I felt it would have been a disservice not to address the issues. If our mission is social justice, equality, and other high moral values, then we absolutely have to address issues of race and injustice.

Over the course of the semester in this class we discussed communities like Ferguson with regard to educational access, resources, and college attendance. We viewed a video produced by Rochester City School District students that depicts a community very similar to that described in And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City Students, a distressed community near Los Angeles. These very similar communities are thousands of miles apart, yet, one is in the neighborhood of our institution. What happened in Ferguson very much impacts college access.

I took the theory-as-tool approach as a framework for our discussion. To prepare for our discussion I constructed a PowerPoint to introduce Critical Race Theory (Tate, 1997), and the concepts of privilege and power by Allan Johnson (2005).  I also introduced the intentional stereotyping and image management of African Americans as noted in the film, Ethnic Notions. As conveyed in the film after emancipation when freed Blacks began to compete for jobs, Black Face, Vaudeville, and comics were ways to enforce stereotypes to prevent integration into communities and the economy. Shown as feeble or dangerous, these images infused stereotypes into the common knowledge of society. We then explored websites that provided background information. For example, the Mapping Decline website (mappingdecline.lib.uiowa.edu/map), school district data, and social disparity maps (see www.vox.com). Racial issues are complex; they do not happen overnight and are connected with troubling policies that encouraged White flight. In addition, I shared counterstories of Native American men who are no longer with us because they were “killed while brown.” I shared the Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women website (www.itstartswithus-mmiw.com/background). These counterstories were not shared to compete for which group suffers the most, but to underscore the endemic racism in the United States that affects all of us.

In the 1990s there was a tense political situation in New York State over Native American land claims. A vigilante group had formed who expressed an intent to burn down the homes of Oneidas. If someone was going to join the vigilante group, they were unlikely to first ask which homes were Oneida homes. I have had many a Black male student (professional, graduate student, or both) tell me they were stopped “while driving Black” to and from my class. Or stopped in the library when they were not professionally dressed. Or both Black men and women asked for help in the cafeteria because non-Black students thought they were cafeteria workers and not students. When stereotypes frame action, credentials and details (like race) are ignored.

The conversation on November 11^th was not easy; it should not have been—it was absolutely necessary and necessary to discuss for however long it took. The point was not to determine who was right or wrong, who-said-what-and-why, but to use information and tools to help us process, to use theory to help that process, and to model and practice discussing a timely and difficult topic. Students commented that we have issues because we do not talk about race, and that in a class earlier in the evening the jury’s decision was not discussed. They termed it the “elephant in the room.”

I can’t breathe

On December 3, 2014, a decision was made not to indict the officer who killed Eric Gardner.

We devote time and resources to issues that matter, to issues that we value. When these issues are not discussed in the classroom messages are conveyed that certain topics—and the people connected to those topics—are not valued. As a faculty of color it is not my sole responsibility to address issues of race. Did I do a good job with our discussion on November 11th? I don’t really know. All I know is that I had to, because it matters.

Black lives matter

Oppressed lives matter

All lives matter

References:

Corwin, M.  (2001). And still we rise: The trials and triumphs of twelve gifted inner-city students.  New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers.

Johnson, A. G. (2005). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Riggs, M. (Director) (1987). Ethnic notions. Berkeley, CA: California Newsreel.

Tate IV, W. F. (1997).  Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. Review of Research in Education, 22, 195-247.