The study by Jason Osborne, published in the December issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology, adds to a small, but growing body of research that links disassociation with academics to failure in school.

In his analysis of data collected through the National Education Logistical Survey, Osborne, who is completing his doctorate in educational psychology at UB, found that unlike other teens, the self-esteem of black adolescent boys becomes less and less linked to academic accomplishment as they move through their high-school years.

By the time they reach 12th grade, he said, there is no statistical relationship between their academic accomplishment and their self-esteem.

Instead of feeling good -- or bad -- because of their academic performance, he found that the self-esteem of black teen-age boys is linked increasingly to popularity and athletic success as they go through high school.

"Unfortunately," he said, "the educational practices that are supposed to solve this problem-dumbing down the curriculum, remediating these students all the way through high school-are likely to make the situation worse."

On the positive side, Osborne said specific changes on many levels, including that of the individual teacher, can bring about significant improvement in the performance of students who have "disconnected" emotionally from academic success or failure.

His study, he added, suggests that a possible solution to the problem of disassociation is to present disengaged students with a strong academic challenge, along with the help needed to accomplish the goal.

"These students really blossom when they're expected to do well and challenged to succeed," he said. "One study demonstrated that by using this approach, kids who had all but given up academically were working on par with their classmates within a year."

Supports previous research

Osborne's study is grounded in a solid base of educational research that has found identification with academics to be a necessary condition for learning. It supports previous research and clarifies the relationship between disidentification, school performance and self-esteem.

A 1973 study co-authored by Jeremy Finn, UB professor of educational psychology, found that failure to identify positively with academic achievement was a major predictor of absenteeism, truancy, dropout and delinquency among all students.

Osborne examined the link between grades, achievement-test scores and self-esteem scores among black, white and Latino teen-agers from across the United States. He found that the link between academic success and positive self-image dropped slightly for most groups through their high-school years.

Dramatic dive

"Latino girls, however, showed an increased relationship between high grades and self-esteem," he said. "Unfortunately, the relationship among the two variables took a dramatic dive among black boys and did not recover.

"Theoretically, at least, students whose self-esteem is linked positively with academic performance should do well," Osborne said, "because for them, good performance is rewarding and poor performance is punishing.

"If a student's identification with academics is diminished," he said, "he will feel neither personally rewarded by good school performance nor punished by poor performance. This is what's happening with black teen-age boys."

Osborne's study supports earlier research by psychologist Claude Steele of Stanford University that defined this "disidentification" as the loss of a previous relationship between an individual's academic self-esteem and his overall self-esteem.

He argued that disidentification is caused by an educational system that in the high-school years reduces whatever positive emotional association a student had developed toward academic performance during his elementary-school years.

Steele's theory was that while all students experience anxiety over possible academic failure, members of disadvantaged groups experience more difficulty because they have to overcome stereotypical ideas about how well they can and will do academically.

Osborne agrees.

"Black adolescent boys suffer even more than black girls or boys of any other group," Osborne said, "because the stereotypical beliefs about them are very, very negative. These kids are often perceived very harshly by teachers, principals and others in authority. They are frequently considered menacing and less able to perform academically than other teen-agers. In short, they are expected to fail.

Attitude is disabling

"This attitude literally disables these youngsters. In addition to the usual teen-age anxiety about success, they are even more stressed by being seen as incompetent and then by the fear that if they don't perform well, then those who suspect blacks of being inferior will be proven right," Osborne said.

"The anxiety levels make it harder to do well academically. As a result, many of them just get right out of the game. They stop even trying." he said.

"It wouldn't be so difficult to turn things around," he added. "We've known for a long time that expectation has a great deal to do with outcome. Improving the academic performance of black teen-age boys will require a change in attitude, a new perspective on this problem on the part of teachers, principals and parents-even one teacher, one principal willing to challenge popular assumptions can make a difference for these students."