Woodland Hills, Propel schools get grants to aid black males
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The Woodland Hills School District and the Propel system of charter schools were awarded a grant from the Heinz Endowments last week to implement programs to help academic achievement among black male students.
Seven districts with a high proportion of black and/or low-income students were invited to apply for the grant, which was awarded as part of the Endowments' African-American Men and Boys Task Force. Woodland Hills and Propel each was awarded a $750,000 grant to be disbursed over two years.
Forty-nine percent of the Woodland Hills graduating class of 2010 was white; 49 percent was black, according to a news release from the district. But 76.5 percent of the dropouts that year were black, and the rate of black male dropouts was 14 percent higher than black female dropouts, the release said.
Woodland Hills will spend the next six months developing a detailed framework for the program and identifying a project director, who must be a black man, according to Woodland Hills assistant superintendent Alan Johnson.
The programs at Woodland Hills and Propel will be built around the Whiting Scholar Identity Model, which looks at a student's whole environment and encourages the "four pillars" in a student's life -- the family and home; peers and friends; the school; and the community -- to help the student with self-improvement, self-efficacy and motivation, among other things.
In Woodland Hills, the model will be implemented beginning with a summer program in 2012, after the district identifies black male students in grades 6 through 12 to participate.
Mr. Johnson said that the program will not be held after school or on Saturdays.
"We want them to understand that this is really core to what we're trying to do," he said. "We're trying to make this like an academic program so they understand that as you move forward in school, things get a lot harder and more rigorous."
The Foundation for Indiana University of Pennsylvania received a $361,500 grant under the same program to recruit black men into the teaching profession.
"Our long-term dream is [that] those young men come back to us as teachers," Mr. Johnson said.
Propel, which has eight schools throughout Allegheny County, plans to use the grant money to extend and expand existing programs.
"We have been very happy with our success with all students, but particularly with African-American students," said Propel Superintendent Carol Wooten. She said black students in Propel schools are 60 percent more likely to test at grade level than black students in the district where they come from.
First Published November 24, 2011 12:00 am
