Can All-Male High Schools Boost African-American Boys' Graduation Rates?

In 2004, David Banks, a former lawyer and assistant principal at a public school in Brooklyn, joined forces with other members of the African-American philanthropic organization 100 Black Men to address what they saw as the appallingly low rates of high school graduation for African-American males in New York City. Their solution: the Eagle Academy for Young Men, a charter school on East 164th Street in the South Bronx that became the first all-male public school in New York City in 30 years.

The school's mission, as described by Banks, was to close both the racial and gender gap in education by reaching out to boys of color who were falling through the cracks. "We're looking for the young men who would be outside on the street corner, outside of the school," he says. "We work with really challenging kids."

Eagle Academy High School got letter grades of B on their most recent publicly available progress reports from the Department of Education (DOE). Banks, for his part, is proud to point out Eagle Academy's high school graduation rate of 82 percent, compared with approximately 51.4 percent of black and 48.7 percent of Hispanic students graduating from high schools citywide.

"Boys of color start getting treated differently around the third or fourth grade," he says. "They're labeled as needing special education; they have more discipline problems." At ABCD, he adds, "It's a 'boys being boys' mentality, and we don't discipline them. Girls are able to adjust better in school. They are neater, better organized, ready to work, and they even have more camaraderie in recent years. Boys aren't doing as well, and they need an environment that focuses on them and their needs."

"One of the things that I like about single-sex schools is the opportunity to help these boys understand the role that a male should assume in society," he says. "They see a lot of crime. They see a lot of violence. They see a lot of absenteeism. Without someone to show them the other side of the coin, it makes it hard for a lot of the guys."