Parents, educators, advocates at Black Parent Initiative symposium discuss 'saving our boys'
Audience members listen as Doris McEwen describes the odds stacked against black boys during the Black Parent Initiative's annual symposium. (Kelly House/The Oregonian)
By Portland parents, educators and advocates gathered Saturday afternoon to discuss one pressing issue: How to ensure black boys’ success in a world where the odds are stacked against them.
More than a hundred people convened at Southeast Portland’s Marshall High School for the Black Parent Initiative’s annual symposium. This year, the topic was “Breaking the Cycle, Closing the Gap, Saving Our Boys.”
The Black Parent Initiative is a Portland group founded in 2006 to help parents steer their black children toward educational success.
In many ways, the symposium looked like any other parent group gathering. Parents in workshops strategized ways to improve their child’s school performance, and build literacy both at school and at home. They talked about preparing kids for college and being good mentors.
The difference came down to the statistics. In addition to a disproportionately high incarceration rate and disproportionately low representation on college campuses, black children make up 41 percent of the special education population in American schools, despite representing only 17 percent of the student body. They are suspended from school more than three times as often as their white classmates.
“That’s unconscionable,” said Doris McEwen, deputy director of curriculum and instruction at the Oregon Education Investment Board, who spoke at the event.
McEwen said the problem isn’t that black children are worse students. Biased testing and
