Dr. Jamaal Eubanks

The achievement gap between African American male students and their peers is not new information. Every district leader I have ever sat across from knows the data. They can tell you the graduation rates, the suspension numbers, the GPA distributions. What the data rarely tells them (and what my doctoral research set out to uncover) is why those gaps persist even when well-meaning programs, caring teachers, and real resources are present.

The answer, I found, is not what most people expect.

It is not primarily about curriculum. It is not about instructional strategy alone. And it is certainly not about deficits in the students themselves. What my research revealed is that African American male students who struggle academically are often operating without something far more fundamental: a sense of themselves as learners, as agents in their own academic lives, and as young people who belong in the spaces where their futures are being decided.

Academic Success Is an Inside Job

When I examined the lived experiences of middle school participants in the Ignite from a Spark Mentoring Program, what emerged was a picture of academic success that no standardized test could fully capture. Academic success, as these young men lived it, extended beyond grades and test performance to encompass the internal conditions that make sustained achievement possible (self-efficacy, reflective capacity, a sense of belonging, the willingness to seek help, and the ability to make deliberate, future-oriented decisions).

Before the program, most participants could not articulate why they lacked confidence. They could not name what kind of support they needed. They showed up to school, but they were not showing up for themselves. After the intervention, something had shifted. Students who once defined belonging through what they could offer on the court began to locate belonging in their own academic conduct and effort. Young people who had no framework for self-reflection began applying introspective thinking to real decisions with real consequences. That is not a peripheral outcome. That is the foundation on which everything else is built.

The Self-Efficacy Problem No One Is Talking About

What concerned me most going into this research (and what the findings confirmed) is that many of our most vulnerable students are not simply struggling academically. They are operating without a coherent identity as learners at all. They enter our schools without a clear sense of what being a student means to them, without a practice of reflection, and without an understanding of how the adults in their lives connect to their academic futures.

This is not a motivation problem. This is not a discipline problem. This is a development problem (and it requires a developmental response).

The young men in this study entered the program in a condition I describe in my research as self-efficacy absence (not simply low confidence, but an underdeveloped sense of self as a learner, a decision-maker, and an agent in one's own academic life). Post-intervention, the shift was meaningful and deeply personal. They could see themselves as students with defined roles and standards. They could reflect on their growth. And perhaps most powerfully, they had a trusted adult whose genuine investment in their potential became, for many, the primary source of their academic confidence.

One trusted relationship changed the trajectory. Imagine what a school culture built around that could do.

What This Means for Schools and Districts

The implications of this research are direct. Schools serving African American male students benefit from implementing structured mentoring programs that incorporate cultural responsiveness, explicit self-efficacy building, and positive youth development. These are not add-ons. They are core infrastructure.

District leaders must also think beyond the program itself. How are mentoring initiatives resourced? How are mentors recruited, trained, and retained? How does the mentoring work connect to what is already happening in classrooms, counseling offices, and family engagement efforts?

Because the research is clear on this: the role of family and community in supporting the academic success of African American male students cannot be overstated. What I call the triangle of support (the intentional, active connection between school, family, and community) is not a nice idea. It is a necessity. When those three systems work in alignment around a young person, the outcomes are different. When they work in isolation, we already know what happens.

The Work Continues

I did not conduct this research to add to a body of literature. I conducted it because I have sat with these young men. I have watched them walk into rooms not knowing if they belonged there. And I have watched them walk out differently — (not because someone fixed them, but because someone finally saw them).

That is what great mentoring does. That is what intentional schools do. And that is the work I am committed to helping schools and districts build — (one student, one relationship, one community at a time).

If you are a school or district leader ready to explore what this looks like in practice, I would welcome the conversation.

— Dr. Armaad Jamaal Eubanks, EdD
Founder & CEO, Eubanks Solutions, LLC
eubanks.solutions@gmail.com

Let us start with the truth that too many school board meetings, strategic planning sessions, and equity task forces have been unwilling to say out loud.

The educational system in the United States was not designed for Black children. It was not reformed into inequity. It was not accidentally exclusionary. It was built (structurally, intentionally, and historically) without Black boys in mind. And until we are honest about that origin, every intervention, every initiative, and every well-funded program will be treating a symptom while leaving the disease untouched.

I say this not as provocation. I say it as a scholar, a researcher, and as someone who was once a Black boy sitting in a classroom wondering whether anyone in that building actually believed in him.

The Data Does Not Lie — But the Narrative Does

Seven decades have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision mandated school desegregation and theoretically provided equal educational access for African American students. Seven decades. And yet the achievement gap between Black and White students has not closed. In Wisconsin (the state where I live, where I work, where I have sat with Black boys and watched them navigate systems that were never built to include them) it has gotten worse.

In the first national assessment of students following the pandemic, Wisconsin posted the widest score gaps between Black and White students of any state in the nation (and by even greater margins than before). The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported that 71.3% of Black students in the class of 2019 graduated within four years, compared to 93.8% of White students. That is a disparity of more than 22 percentage points. In fourth-grade reading. In mathematics. Across every category measured, Wisconsin ranked last.

Read that again. Last. In a country with 50 states, Wisconsin (a state that prides itself on its educational institutions and its progressive values) maintains the widest achievement gap between Black and White students nationally.

And still, in district after district, the conversation defaults to what is wrong with the students.

This Is Not a Student Problem

My doctoral research examined this gap through the lived experiences of African American male middle school students participating in the Ignite from a Spark Mentoring Program. What the research confirmed (and what years of working with this population had already shown me) is that the factors driving underachievement among Black boys are not rooted in individual deficiency. They are rooted in system design.

The deficit model (a framework that attributes educational underachievement to individual student inadequacies such as insufficient effort or capability) has shaped how American educational institutions have understood, or more precisely misunderstood, Black students for generations. My research grounds this clearly: the deficit model is rooted in racist theories and practices widely accepted throughout American history. It is, at its core, a victim-blaming ideology in which individuals in positions of power attribute marginalized communities' higher failure rates to individual deficiencies rather than examining the structural factors that created those conditions in the first place.

This is the narrative that shows up in budget meetings when districts decide not to fund culturally responsive programming. It shows up in low expectations communicated (sometimes without words) to Black boys every single day they walk through school doors. It shows up in unwelcoming school climates, in limited peer support networks, in identity formation challenges that no standardized curriculum has ever been designed to address.

The system was not built for these students. And when students do not thrive in a system that was never built for them, we call it their failure.

That is the lie this article is here to name.

What the Research Says Districts Must Do

Here is where I will call it out directly: there are districts in Wisconsin and across this country that know the data, have seen the research, and have chosen not to invest in (or adequately compensate individuals or organizations for) the interventions that evidence says work. Not because the programs do not exist. Not because the research is unclear. But because Black boys have historically not been the population that educational systems were designed to prioritize (and old designs die hard).

My research, grounded in Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory and Harper's Anti-Deficit Achievement Framework, examined whether a structured, culturally responsive mentoring intervention could influence both academic success and self-efficacy among African American male middle school students. The answer was yes. But the implications go far beyond one program.

The research is clear that Black boys need schools and districts willing to actively invest in culturally responsive interventions (programs that do not just teach academic content but build identity, develop self-efficacy, and communicate through every interaction that these young men are capable, worthy, and deserving of success). They need educators who understand the difference between a student who is disengaged and a student who has been given every reason not to trust the institution asking for his engagement. They need administrative leadership that does not just acknowledge the gap in a PowerPoint presentation but allocates real resources to closing it.

Jordan and Cooper said it plainly: Black male students remain disproportionately at risk of school failure, and effective policies and strong interventions are needed. That was written in 2003. We are still waiting on the policies. We are still underfunding the interventions.

The Cost of Inaction

Every year a district defers the investment is another cohort of Black boys who navigate a system that was never intended to include them (without the tools, the relationships, or the institutional support that research says they need). The graduation gap does not close on its own. The self-efficacy deficit does not resolve without intentional intervention. And the belief (held quietly in too many buildings) that these students are the problem does not get challenged unless leaders are willing to challenge it.

I am not interested in comfortable conversations about equity. I am interested in the ones that lead to action (to districts making deliberate, resourced, sustained commitments to the young men who have been waiting the longest for the system to finally see them).

The research exists. The programs exist. The only thing missing in too many places is the will to act.

The work continues. The question is whether your district will be part of it.

— Dr. Armaad Jamaal Eubanks, EdD
Founder & CEO, Eubanks Solutions, LLC
eubanks.solutions@gmail.com