A Lancaster, Pa., high school is under fire for implementing a new program that has created separate homerooms for black juniors. In December, McCaskey East High School assigned its 275 eleventh-graders to 19 homerooms led by teacher-mentors. The black students were separated by gender and placed in three homerooms led by black teachers. The other students were similarly assigned to teachers with whom they'd had a prior relationship. All students were allowed to choose a different mentor or to opt out of the program altogether.
"We saw the need for mentoring of all our students," McCaskey East Principal Bill Jimenez told AOL News.
But news of the program has caused concern that the school is practicing a form of segregation –- an issue that was central to the outlawing of a Mexican-American studies program in Arizona earlier this month.
"The intent of mentoring at McCaskey High School is to build strong teacher and student relations, not separate students by race," the Lancaster School District said in a statement. "The high school is disappointed by the negative perception and focus on single racial composition programming."
The program was proposed by a McCaskey East instructional coach, Angela Tilghman, who wanted to improve the academic performance of the school's black students. Last year, they fared poorly on Pennsylvania standardized exams, with only 30 percent of black students scoring a proficient or advanced grade in reading, while 60 percent of white students and 42 percent of all students achieved those levels.
Tilghman developed the program after reading studies that suggested black students performed better when grouped by gender with other black students and a black mentor. She cited research on African-American student achievement done by the state of Maryland, Dr. Alfred Tatum of the University of Illinois, and an annual report on the African-American achievement gap.
Pedro Noguera, a professor of educational sociology at New York University, told CNN that while the goal of the program is sound, it might miss its mark.
"Sometimes when we separate students in this way we inadvertently reinforce stereotypes and may in fact stigmatize children by suggesting that there is something wrong with them and that therefore they need extra help," he said.
