INTERRACIAL VOICE

Essay

Another View:
Jail Bait
By Emory Curtis

July 14, 1999

Undoubtedly, I'm looking at our problems through a different prism from the NAACP's leadership. It's incredulous to me that the NAACP's leadership chose having a black actor or actress as the lead in a TV show as the paramount issue to fight today.

Whether they meant it or not, that's the impression that is left on the public's mind when the President and CEO's keynote address to its 90th annual convention was used to attack the four major networks for not having some black leads in the new prime time TV shows.

Sure, we ought to have more black faces on TV. But, is that anywhere near as important to our future as having fewer of our youngsters in the lower academic echelons in schools?

Of course not. We can survive and survive well without black faces in leading roles on prime time TV but, on the other hand, we can't survive well in a knowledge-based economy if we don't make drastic improvements in the academic achievements of our youngsters.

Over the years I have watched the statistics on academic performance in local schools in many areas as they get published in the major daily newspaper of the area. There is a commonality in those scores.

Almost without exception, the schools with the lowest academic performance have the highest percentage enrollment of African American, Hispanics or a combination of both. In this competitive knowledge-based economy, that spells disaster.

Make no mistake about it -- things will get worse for us, as a group, if we don't better the education system for our youngsters.

Over the past fourteen years in California applicants for teaching credentials have had to pass a screening test, California Basic Educational Skills Test, commonly called CBEST. It is an 8th to 10th-grade test, at best.

It tests applicants in basic reading, writing and arithmetic. From the samples I have seen of that test, I don't want anyone teaching my grandchildren at any level who couldn't pass CBEST. Frankly, a fair ninth-grader should cool it.

In my view, the CBEST stats show a horrendous failure rate on first try for all applicants. For instance, about one out of five whites flunk, about one-half of the Latinos (51 percent) and Asians (47 percent) don't make it, and almost two out of three (62 percent) African American college graduates fall by the wayside.

The results of the CBEST tests show that unless our youngsters basic education improves, we are even going to be squeezed out of our largest source of professional employment, the public education system.

As for the technical fields that are the dominant underpinnings of a knowledge-based economy, we have always been few and far between. It looks like now we are even fewer and farther between.

Of all of the problems we face as a group -- racism, driving while black, undercover job discrimination, redlining, etc. -- our lagging in academic achievement is the most serious for the immediate and longterm future.

That problem doesn't just start at the college level. It starts in the first three or four grades in school. Those lagging behind a grade or two by the fifth or sixth grade (which many are), are almost sure losers in the academic and legitimate economic survival race.

Furthermore, we don't just face that problem in San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach, Houston or Miami or wherever you are when you read this column. It's a problem all over the country.

That's why I'm so disappointed with the NAACP placing a black face or two in a leading role on a TV program on the "A" list of our problems. The NAACP's history is one of focusing on our key problems.

When we have real problems, we expect to find the NAACP involved in trying to solve that problem. It certainly should be clear to all of us that our laggard status in terms of education in this country is a real problem for us.

I'm sure the NAACP leadership knows those facts. Make no mistake about it, as a group, the NAACP leaders are a very smart group. However, I think they have a problems in deciding how to bring the education problem to the fore. Many of their key members are education professionals.

And if the NAACP focuses on the failure to educate our children, they will be pointing a serious finger at themselves because the failure can be laid at the feet of our own professionals in that field.

Public school systems that are failing with our youngsters are usually well sprinkled with black teachers, principals and administrators. And if the NAACP leaders really attack that system, they would be attacking themselves, their own leaders and members.

Frankly, they ought to bite the bullet and take the lead for change rather than delegate the turmoil now going on about public education to the "B" or even "C" list of our problems. We need a strong debate in our own communities about what should be done to change the present education system.

The public education system is doing such a disservice to our youngsters that keeping the status quo ought to be out of question; drastic changes are needed.

The ones that seem to worry the most about the education of our youngsters are mothers and grandmothers. I think intuitively they know that if the schools don't reach their young boys, they are only raising them to be jail bait, at best.

Let me hear from you: (916)492-9527 (V); (916)492-9146 (FAX); e-mail; eccurtis@hotmail.com. To see back columns http://home.earthlink.net/~eccurtis