Blacks Detail Plan for Classroom Success, Criticize System as Racist : Education: Coalition spokeswoman threatens “teacher bashing” if 1980s’ attitude continues to prevail in San Diego district.

Frustrated by the lack of academic success among black students, a coalition of San Diego-area black organizations Thursday simultaneously unveiled a detailed plan for schools, parents and students to boost achievement and lashed out at the school system for “miseducation and institutionalized racism” against blacks.

Initial favorable reaction of city schools administrators and teachers to many of the recommendations in the 58-page “Blueprint For Action” was tempered by the language of coalition spokeswoman Jacqueline Jackson, director of education for the Urban League of San Diego.

Jackson told a briefing of black leaders and district educators that blacks would resort to “teacher bashing” in the 1990s, if necessary, to counter what she called the daily bashing of black children during the 1980s that blacks allowed to happen because they were too passive toward public schooling.

Jackson said the black community “would no longer tolerate” racist teachers or explanations that lay all or part of the blame for poor academics on a lack of parent involvement, gang problems, excess television or other factors outside of school.

She said the coalition soon would demand that the San Diego Unified School District hire an advocate for black parents and students. The advocate would report not to the district but to one or more of the nonprofit organizations under the coalition.

“This will not be the last of us,” Jackson warned schools at the conclusion of the coalition’s presentation Thursday. Asked later whether there was anything positive happening in the schools, Jackson said there “must be” since, in her view, about 8% of black students are doing well in San Diego schools.

No school official saw the blueprint before Thursday’s presentation. Deputy Schools Supt. Bertha Pendleton said afterward that, although the district “must generate support to improve (black academics) among both its people and the community,” the statements by Jackson “will not make things any easier.”

Secondary teacher Hugh Boyle, president of the San Diego Teachers Assn., called the remarks “intemperate,” saying that the problem “is bigger than just saying that everything is the schools’ fault.

“At first glance, I think the document has a lot of things that are positive. . . . We haven’t been successful with a lot of things we’ve tried.

“But we’re going to have to deal with things now both in terms of the report and in what Jackson said.”

Even school board Vice President Shirley Weber, herself a strong critic during the past year of school programs to help black students achieve, later distanced herself somewhat from Jackson’s remarks.

“There are some good things happening in schools but not on a consistent basis,” Weber said. “There are teachers and administrators working hard, but you can’t say with any level of certainty to (blacks) that you can put your kid in any school and the system will provide a good level of education.”

Weber said that Jackson’s statements represent “an adequate perception” of how the black community sees schools treating black children. “I’d say that too many children are poorly educated, not miseducated . . . but the effect is the same.”

The blueprint presented Thursday results from black community concern over statistics, both local and nationwide during the past year, showing that blacks continue to do poorly in school overall and that achievement gaps separating black from white and Asian students are widening.

Black students in San Diego number about 19,000, about 16% of the district’s 119,000 student total.

Several district studies have shown that black students rank near or at the bottom on standardized achievement tests and grade-point averages, and near or at the top in dropout rates, suspensions and placement in special-education classes. In 1987-88, only 23 of 444 black male seniors graduating from city schools had grade-point averages of 3.0 or above out of a maximum of 4.0. One-third of black students drop out of high school, contrasted with one out of four overall in the district.

The coalition’s plan includes specific items for the school district in general, for teachers and counselors, for students and parents, and for business and community leaders. Many recommendations involve ideas that the district, or individual schools, already use or have agreed to try.

Among the recommendations: that schools actively recruit black teachers and role models; work with teachers to lessen racism and raise their expectations for black children; expand parent education classes at schools; put more aspects of black culture and history into the curriculum; have students approach school more positively by working on study habits; and ask parents to reward class success.

But Jackson and other coalition members returned several times in their statements to demands that district employees stop their “alienation of blacks,” in the words of Gail Knight, head of the San Diego chapter of the National Black Child Development Institute.

“If what is happening to black students was happening to white children, it would have been stopped,” Jackson said, referring to what she said are the many complaints from parents to the Urban League about schools telling them “how wrong” the parents are to complain and “how bad their child is” in behavior.