The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of African American children's oral language skills with the intention of building the understanding of how these skills translate to classroom contexts. The chapter also summarizes the goals of the Common Core that are specifically related to speaking and listening and describes how African…

Three aspects of cognition (fluid intelligence, executive functioning, and crystallized intelligence) in pre-K were examined as predictors of math and reading achievement in kindergarten among an economically diverse sample of 198 African American children. From a variable-centered perspective, confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the three…

This phenomenological study used individual interviews with ten graduate students in school counseling and school psychology to understand their experiences in a University-Church service-learning partnership to support PreK-12th grade youth in response to COVID-19. Most graduate participants identified as White/Non-Hispanic, and all youth served…

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the eyewitness memory performance of 3- and 5-year-old African American children (N = 33) from lowincome households. The children were asked to remember the routine details of a physical examination immediately after the physical exam and again after a delay interval of 6 weeks. Age-related…

Drawing on translanguaging and raciolinguistics frameworks in an ethnographic case study, this article contextualizes how young Black American children engage in rich literacy practices to validate their cultural and linguistic identities in an elementary, two-way immersion bilingual program. Findings demonstrated that despite teachers' perceived…

Perceptions of black representations in literature and other visual mediums as positive or negative continuously cause consternation and debate (Fleetwood, 2011). Because African American children are literacy participants and consumers, they are not immune from experiencing this tension. This essay considers the effects and affective threads of…

This essay was written during this time of: rising coronavirus cases, particularly among Blacks and other minorities, increased racial tension, and the call for justice and fairness in all systems within the United States of America. As a highly concerned educator, I am here renewing the call for more equality and the addressing of the needs of…

Evidence suggests that oral narrative skills are a linguistic strength for African American children, yet few studies have examined how these skills are associated with reading for African American boys and girls. The current study uses longitudinal data of a sample of 72 African American 4-year-olds to examine how preschool oral narrative skills…

Anxieties relating to the health, safety and security of schoolchildren have been met with a variety of surveillance apparatus in schools internationally. Drawing on findings from a content analysis of newspaper reports relating to drug testing in Australian schools, this article seeks to excavate the ways in which the media shapes, informs,…

Black children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are diagnosed later than their White peers, are more likely to be misdiagnosed, and are less likely to receive early intervention services or a developmental evaluation by three years old. Using a grounded theory approach, we solicited the perspectives of parents and other primary caregivers of…

Since the Coleman Report's release in 1966, education policymakers have grappled with the fact that, on average, African American children's academic and behavioral outcomes are depressed relative to those of white children (Coleman et al. 1966). Because African American children disproportionately come from low-income families, it is generally…

Between 1993 and 2012, the suicide rates for African American children between the ages of five and eleven doubled whereas rates for Caucasian children in the same age group declined. Although suicide rates were higher among males, a significant increase in female suicides is causing alarm. The growing number of suicides among African American…

Children experience toxic stress if there is pronounced activation of their stress-response systems, in situations in which they do not have stable caregiving. Due to their exposure to multiple poverty-related risks, African American children may be more susceptible to exposure to toxic stress. Toxic stress affects young children's brain and…

In this chapter, we dismantle the current educational rhetoric that pervasively characterizes Black children as being "at-risk," "deficient," or "underachievers." Instead, we replace this deficit-oriented rhetoric with one that encapsulates the cultural and educational excellence that inspires Black children to reach…

This essay examines the first detailed study of gifted African American youth: Lillian Steele Proctor's master's thesis from the late 1920s on Black children in Washington, DC. Unlike formative research on gifted children by educational psychologists, Proctor's investigation emphasized children's experiences at school, home, and community in…