“The Amazing Vanishing Black Male is Playing at a College Campus Near You”
How Significant is the Need
Bay Ridge Christian College, founded in 1953, is located in Kendleton, Texas.
The continually renovated college facility includes residential dormitories and
other supporting buildings on an 88-acre campus located in Fort Bend County,
the fastest-growing county in the Nation. The campus offers a serene, Christian
environment away from the distractions that often derail students in urban cities.
This type of educational environment is needed to combat the alarming statistics
which reveal:
• Every year, across the country, a dangerously high percentage of
students-disproportionately poor and minority-disappear from the
educational pipeline before graduating from high school. Nationally, only
about 68 percent of all students who enter 9th grade will graduate “on
time” with regular diplomas. While the graduation rate for white students is
75 percent, only about 50 percent of Black, Hispanic, and Native-
American students earn regular diplomas alongside their classmates.
Graduation rates are even lower for minority males. In some schools,
only one-third of African-American males who enter ninth grade will
graduate four years later. Yet, because of misleading and inaccurate
reporting of dropout and graduation rates, the public remains largely
unaware of this educational and civil rights crisis (The Civil Rights
Project at Harvard University).
• Serious achievement gaps persist between and among American school
students of different ethnic groups. Even when Americans do graduate
from high school, their skills often fail to meet even minimal standards of
proficiency. The average African-American student who graduates from
high school has the same mathematical aptitude as the average Anglo
student when he/she graduates from 8th grade (Covenant with Black
America. Edited by Tavis Smiley).
• The average African American high school graduate has the reading
skills of an average white ninth-grade student. (CNN Black in America)
• Nationally, only 66 percent of students who enter postsecondary
institutions complete a degree. For students of color, the national
postsecondary completion rate is 33 percent. In the State of Texas, the
figures are 48 percent for the general population and 33 percent for
students of color. (Good Morning America, on U.S. Department of
Education report: College Completion Rates; September 7, 2006)
• While Black males dominate the commercial and recreational arenas of
professional sports, Hip-Hop, Rap, and other forms of entertainment, in
some school districts, more than 50 percent of Black males never
graduate from high school. In addition, Black people make up miniscule
numbers of the Nation’s doctors, lawyers, and other professionals: only
3.2 percent of U.S. lawyers are Black, as are 3 percent of U.S. physicians.
Just 22 percent of Black males who begin college will have earned a
college degree six years later.