Black leaders in Youngstown AWOL

It’s too late for diplomatic language and touchy-feely expressions of encouragement. There’s one overarching reason the Youngstown City School District is failing: Dysfunctional black families – or, in many cases, the lack of cohesive family life in the black community.

If that opinion comes across as too harsh, it’s because political correctness has ruled the day on the issue of education.

Consider the following statement from Interim Superintendent Stephen Stohla after the latest results of statewide standardized testing under the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers showed the Youngstown district failing – again:

“There are a lot of issues that impact our test scores that are not school-related, and we’re trying to do everything we can to make some of those issues less of a barrier.”

Stohla noted that the system is focusing on increasing parental involvement and on incorporating wraparound services such as dental care as it strives to improve educational outcomes.

Perhaps it’s unfair to expect the head of the district to be as brazen as this writer in assessing the continuing stark situation in the schools. But someone has to say it.

In fairness, however, it must be noted that the dysfunction in the black community isn’t confined to Youngstown.

Veteran national newspaper columnist Thomas Sowell, a black conservative who grew up in the ghettos of New York City, has long railed against the collapse of the black family.

Historic perspective

In his column published Friday in The Vindicator, Sowell provided a historic perspective that cannot be dismissed by black leaders – regardless of their political leanings.

Sowell wrote: “We often hear that various problems within the black community are ‘a legacy of slavery.’ That phrase is in widespread use among people who believe in the kinds of welfare state programs that began to dominate government policies in the 1960s.

“Blaming social problems today on ‘a legacy of slavery’ is another way of saying, ‘Don’t blame our welfare state policies for things that got worse after those policies took over. Blame what happened in earlier centuries.’”

Sowell then lays out the “facts” as he sees them that have contributed to the problems within the black community. Among them:

Children being raised with no father in the home. As of 1960, nearly a century after slavery ended, 22 percent of black children were being raised in single-parent families. Thirty years later, 67 percent of all black children were being raised in single-parent families.

As of 1960, homicide rates among nonwhite males had gone down by 22 percent, during the preceding decade. But, during the decade of he 1960s, that trend suddenly reversed, and the homicide rate shot up by 76 percent.

“Few people today know that marriage rates and rates of labor force participation were once higher among blacks than among whites – all of this during the first century after slavery. In later years, a reversal occurred, largely in the wake of the welfare state expansions that began in the 1960s.”

Sowell isn’t the only prominent black to issue such a searing indictment of the current state of affairs. Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, a retired nationally renowned neurosurgeon, also has been pointed in his assessment of what is going on in the black community.

And there’s the observations of once-popular, globally known comedian Bill Cosby, who has railed against the lack of parental involvement in the lives of their children, the collapse of family structure and the behavior of young black males.

In other words, it isn’t racial to point out that the problems afflicting the Youngstown City School District can be traced to the dysfunction that is undermining the development of the black community, in general, and black children, in particular.

If you don’t believe what goes on – or doesn’t go on – in the home has a direct impact on how children perform in school, consider this statement from Superintendent Terry Armstrong, whose Lordstown School District is one of the few in which 100 percent of students achieved “proficient or above” in some categories of this year’s standardized state testing:

“We are very, very happy. We have a very, very hard-working staff. The students are awesome. They work really hard. They take direction really well. Their families are very supportive. … It’s just wonderful to see it represented in test scores.”

Or, how about the formula for success laid out by Jared Cardillo, director of instruction for the Boardman School District: “ … a good combination of great parents, great teachers and great students.”

“We’re pretty happy – but not satisfied,” Cardillo said. “We always want to get better.”

Bottom line: It all starts in the home. Black leaders in Youngstown should stop pontificating about what needs to be done in the Youngstown schools and the administration building and focus on the neighborhoods.

It’s simple: Save the children – and everything else will fall into place.