Using Culturally Sensitive Theories and Research to Meet the Academic Needs of Low-Income African American

The economic and social barriers to the academic and social success of many African American children re-main in place as the new millennium begins. These realities provide impetus for developing community-based partnership education programs designed to self-empower African American children for academic and social success under any socioeconomic conditions that exist in their lives. Progress toward effective program development, however, has been hindered by a dearth of culturally sensitive theories and research. The Research-Based Model Partnership Education Program (Model Program) is an effective, community-based, university– school–community partnership education program for self-empowering African American children for success. The formative and summative research of the Model Pro-gram is described in hopes of advancing theory and re-search for meeting the academic and social needs of low-income African American children. African American children are the proxy for what ails American education in general. And so, as we fashion solutions which help African American children, we fashion solutions which help all children. —Augustus F. Hawkins1 Two decades of progress in reducing educational dis-parities between African American children and Eu-ropean American children stalled and, by some in-dicators, reversed course in the 1990s (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 1997, 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c). Low academic achievement and disproportionate high school dropout rates remain common problems among African American children, particularly those in low-income families (NCES, 2001a). The continued underedu-cation of African Americans will undermine broader school-reform efforts and ultimately place a heavy burden on society as a whole. Despite repeated calls for and general agreement about the need for more research into the lives of childre