African ed: students at African-centered schools in Chicago are outperforming many of their peers as they learn about their culture.

At age 14, Haki R. Madhubuti hated his existence. But the African-American poet, publisher, activist and educator said his self-image changed radically after reading Richard Wright's seminal work, "Black Boy.

Until then, Madhubuti said most of the literature he had read depicted African Americans as slaves or servants who did not play leading roles in society. But Wright's work inspired the young Madhubuti with its "sharp, convincing prose," its depiction of African Americans as people capable of great achievement and the way in which it "articulated the plight of black people in America."

"It was a revelation for a young black boy who saw no hope," said Madhubuti, who went on to read everything else Wright had published--and then every other black writer he could find at the time.

"[Wright's] was a voice that I felt I could emulate, that I could learn from. I felt liberated," he said. "It started me on this long journey to where I am today."

A desire to lead African-American youngsters on similarly healing and inspiring personal journeys led Madhubuti and his wife, Carol Lee, also known as Safisha Madhubuti, to co-found the Betty Shabazz International Charter School, which joined the Chicago Public Schools system in 1998.

Using what has become known as an African-centered curriculum, the school aims to educate black youngsters in the basics of math, reading, language arts, science and social studies, while affirming them culturally with consistent references to the contributions of Africans and African Americans to these fields: from George Washington Carver in science class, to Dizzy Gillespie in music, to the ancient Egyptians in mathematics and engineering.

"You can't minimize the importance of cultural knowledge," said Madhubuti, who founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University, where he is a university distinguished professor. "And you cannot build a healthy child--most certainly, he or she will not have a healthy world view--if he or she does not see himself or herself involved creatively in the development of civilization, culture, industry, science."

While questions remain about the overall effectiveness of the African-centered approach, Illinois State Board of Education data shows that students learning under the curriculum at Shabazz and another predominantly black Chicago elementary school outperformed many of their neighborhood peers on the 2006 Illinois Standards Achievement Test.

With nearly 67 percent of students meeting state standards, Shabazz ranked first in composite test scores among 10 public schools in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood, where Shabazz is the only charter. The school ranked ninth in composite scores among 11 charter elementary schools in Chicago that took the test in 2006.

The Woodlawn Community School, which has used an African-centered curriculum since it opened in 1996, ranked first in composite scores among six neighborhood schools in the Woodlawn neighborhood. About 68 percent of Woodlawn students met state standards in 2006.

Woodlawn principal Kweku Embil said the African-centered approach augments the standard Chicago Public Schools curriculum with content that affirms black children's identities. "We emphasize the children's heritage," he said. "We are not dogmatic about it."

Despite the academic success of African-centered schools like Woodlawn and Shabazz, there is little in the way of national or longitudinal research that shows how African-centered education affects student achievement. Some question whether the curriculum itself is what improves test scores, as opposed to strong leadership and committed teachers.

"You're not going to get better results just because you call yourselves [African-centered]," says Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor of urban education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who cites two African-centered schools in Milwaukee, one successful and one less so. "The one that's doing better ... recruits the teachers who signed on from the beginning to do this work. The other one is populated by people who just needed a job."

Ron Ferguson, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, isn't sure whether African-centered programs are more effective. Ferguson chairs the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University, a national effort to raise achievement for all children while narrowing racial, ethnic and socio-economic gaps.

"If done well, [African-centered education] stands probably as good a chance as any other way to motivate and engage people," said Ferguson, noting that there is no single African-centered approach. "What you've got is lots of different people ... each doing it in a fairly idiosyncratic way."

The Achievement Gap Initiative does not pay significant attention to the development of African-centered programs, Ferguson said. "[African-centered education is] not a major phenomenon," he says. "It's not rejected, either. It's just marginal. Anecdotally, you hear about schools that do it that are great, and you hear about schools that do it that aren't great."

Lee, a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, emphasized that test scores are not the only way Shabazz measures student progress.

"We are also assessing the development of values, the development of self-discipline, the monitoring of the kinds of goals the kids develop for what they want to do in the future, and why those goals would be important, not only for themselves but for their families, for their communities," she said.

In addition to its purely academic aspects, African-centered education grounds children in African and African-American values through the ancient Egyptian principles of Ma'at--truth, reciprocity, harmony, balance, order, propriety and justice. Children are also exposed to the more modern but very similar principles recognized during Kwanzaa, a historically African-American celebration emphasizing unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

Embil said the values and expectations are at least as important as the content itself. "What sets us apart is our emphasis on the virtues," he said. "Those virtues form the basis of our school rules. ... These are values that come from [the children's] heritage. We demand that they respect those values."

The hallways and classrooms of both Shabazz and Woodlawn provide ample visual evidence that these are not cookie-cutter Chicago public schools.

At Shabazz, one sees African artwork interspersed along one hallway with student-made diagrams of the muscular, nervous and respiratory systems. There hangs a large American flag, but instead of red, white and blue, the flag sports the red, green and black colors of the African diaspora, with 50 tiny maps of Africa in place of the stars. In an 8th-grade classroom, posters give a timeline of black history and profiles of African-American heroes from Thurgood Marshall, to Rosa Parks, to Martin Luther King Jr.

Woodlawn displays similar if somewhat sparser sights. There is a red, green and black version of the American flag in a 1st-grade classroom honoring African-American firefighters who died on 9/11, flags of myriad African countries in the hallways, and books about African Americans on display in a kindergarten classroom. Among the books is "Something Beautiful," a story about the search for beauty in a bleak landscape, in which the narrator notes that broken glass on the street "looks like stars."

The lessons taught in these classrooms on a given day sometimes reflect the African-centered approach but, in many cases, they could be delivered anywhere. School leaders are quick to note that African-centered does not mean African-exclusive.

"We do a lot of comparing and contrasting--not leaving [traditionally taught] things out--but being more inclusive," said Makita Kheperu, principal at Shabazz.

In her 8th-grade language arts and social studies room, Shariba Rivers passes out "Mother Tongue," an essay in which author Amy Tan discusses growing up in a bilingual community and the different languages she needed to learn as a Chinese American. Rivers relates that to students' experiences, from learning Swahili in school to picking up "Ebonics" in their neighborhoods.

"We have a language that we use to speak to our friends. We have a language that we use to speak to our elders. We have a language that we use to speak out in public," she said. "We're very similar to Amy Tan in that way."

Lee cited other examples of how cultural references might be woven into every day lessons. "If you're going to understand the development of Greek and Roman civilization, you have to understand the interactions in antiquity among Greece, Rome and North Africa," she said. "In literature ... if you're going to understand genres like magical realism, you're going to read not only people like William Faulkner,... but you're also going to read people like Toni Morrison."

Kheperu said that in mathematics, they learn about ancient Egyptian contributions to numeracy. In science, they examine "what kinds of decisions scientists make. What studies have they done? What studies have they not done?" she said. And they learn scientific method by exploring culturally relevant questions like: Why is diabetes more prevalent among African Americans than the general population?

School officials said nothing essential to the students' long-term knowledge gets left out. Lee challenges the notion that the content itself is what's most critical in educating young minds, using literature as an example.

"Some people think that the point of the literature curriculum is coverage--and that when you graduate from high school, you should have read X, Y and Z," she said, referring to the traditional canon of authors who have been read in American schools for generations. "We define 'canonical' as literature which fundamentally stands the test of time, and [believe] that every national tradition--whether it's Nigerian literature, Russian literature, Caribbean literature--every national literature has a canon."

At Woodlawn, African-centered cultural references seem somewhat fewer. Second-graders in their library period are reading and talking about non-fiction books. A 5th-grade science class is learning the definition of ecological terms. Third-graders are whipping through math worksheets. After more than an hour guiding a visitor through seven classrooms, Embil noted they had heard no mention of Africa.

"Our concept is not to hammer it down. We introduce that in a very subtle way," Embil said. "It's more pronounced at Shabazz. That's their approach. It works for them." Madhubuti agreed with that distinction.

At Woodlawn, the main focus is African-centered but teachers draw from other cultures, said Venus Akbar, a kindergarten teacher who has been at Woodlawn since its founding. "I pull a lot more resources out on various ethnic groups."

"I'm educating myself, too, trying to teach the children the importance of who they are [and] to respect themselves and their history," added Akbar, who said she sees greater engagement on students' part when she covers African-centered content. "I see it more so in the morning ritual, as well as when we're talking about our history as African-American people. They're really curious. They make connections to stories their grandparents have told them. They're really engaged."

Power points

While questions remain about the overall effectiveness of African-centered education, students learning under this approach at two predominantly black Chicago elementary schools--Betty Shabazz International Charter School and Woodlawn Community School--outperformed many of their peers on standardized tests last year. The Chicago Reporter analyzed 2006 Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores and found that:

* Shabazz ranked first in composite scores among 10 public schools in the Greater Grand Crossing community, where Shabazz is the only charter.

* The Woodlawn Community School ranked first in composite scores among six neighborhood schools in the Woodlawn community.

African-centered schools educate black youngsters in the basics of math, reading, language arts, science and social studies, while affirming them culturally with consistent references to the contributions of Africans and African Americans: from George Washington Carver in science class, to Dizzy Gillespie in music, to the ancient Egyptians in mathematics and engineering.