Thursday, October 04, 2007

The African American Academy - can not close

The African American Academy in Seattle was organized and opened out of the frustration of African American community that Seattle Public Schools had not created a curriculum or taught in ways that African American students could learn at the same levels as their white peer group.

After 17 years of underfunding, inadequate personnel selection race based assessments that preclude learning styles of African Americans there is still an achievement gap. There are several African American professors of education who travel to Kenya and other African nations to support the learning outcomes of African Children. As school has been built in Ghana by an African American Seattle School employee. How can this occur while children right in their own city are failing? Well, it occurs because those who know how to educated African American students and hold themselves and others to high expectations have not been allowed to take a significant role in AAA. So, they go where they are wanted and where excellence is wanted and expected.

Thankfully, most of those who created the AAA are still living and know that when establishing AAA the existence as a school was very much a treaty with the community. The school was not a whim of any particular board or administration.

And with this, those who can bring teaching and learning to African American and African born children must do this at home in Seattle as well as in African nations. It is time for Seattle Schools to give AAA the funds that belong to the children, teachers must teach or accept the training needed to teach African born and American African children or move to another school. Administrators must lead in ways that support the cultural respect for a community of African heritage and remove all residuals of colonialism and slavery.

The African American Academy can not close, because it will say to historians that no, we could not teach African born or American African children to be excellent even in the year that America voted an American African into the office of President of the United States of America