There are a dominant number of researches examining the relationship between African American males in urban communities and the predictors of high school dropouts in search of finding if there are predictors that contribute to African American males dropping out of high school. While the research done on this subject can contradict itself in many instances, with studies showing support for both sides of the argument I will show how circumstances in fact play a role on African American male’s decision to drop-out of high school. It is today widely accepted that there is not any indicators in to why African American males drop out of high school affecting their academic success. While the research done on this subject over the last years contradicts itself in many instances, studies showing support for urban communities being at blame as one side of the argument where as in recent study it shows other factors such as behavior, grade point average (GPA), socioeconomic status (SES) and social environment. Yes the urban community could take a role in the high dropouts between African American males, but there are also other factors that can pay an even bigger role in the effect on academic success. Also research shows the dropout rate differs between races and gender. However, in my research I have found theories to why African American males dropout of high school, resulting in the gap African American males graduating high school. It is my goal to reliably answer the following questions: Given the data of Oakland Technical High School does the location of the school play apart in why African American males dropout of high school. Does gender play a major role in the effects in academic success? If so, what factors of social circumstances within the community of the school and the gender role have? I will now begin with some background on my research.
Literature
The aspect of African American males academic achievement rate is falling tremendously low. Their dropout rates compared to white males has a bigger gap in terms of their ethincy numbers and the dropout rates. Both races differ between “private troubles” and “public issues”. In this paper I would like to focus on how larger forces and experiences can constrain academic achievement and life chances in African American males. The data that I will use will be the data of African American males and white males in Oakland Tech in Oakland, CA. By further investigating Oakland Tech high school, we see that conflicting messages arises in African American academic achievement. White males are noticeably higher in graduate rates (62%) than the African American males at (48.4%) in Oakland Tech high school. In contrast, African American males have a much lower percentage of h graduates with CSU/UC required (28.9%) compared Whites (87.8%). While the data on African American males students at Oakland Tech High School may not be in representative of the entire nation percentage on all African American males, we see that it is likely a possibility that teacher expectations do have an effect on African American males students.
In addressing the possibilities that teacher expectations do have an effect on African American males students. I want to focus on the book “Bad Boys” by ( ) in this book she argues how African American males already have “a jail cell with their names on it (author, Pg.1). Furthermore, (author) was doing her research on the view of African American males in the teachers mind and what were their expectations on the African American males. And what she found was that the teachers views were negative because of the stigma already place on an African American males that their behavior is reckless and that most of them end up in prisons and that their life chances are slim to none because they tend to fall in the cycle of what society pictures them to be.
In the article, “Increasing Prosocial Behavior and Academic Achievement Among Adolescent African