Barbara Fleming Ph.D.

Barbara Fleming attended elementary and high school in the U.S. south before graduating from college with a degree in psychology. Barbara also studied psychology at the graduate level with a concentration in the intellectual development of children, earning both the Master's and Ph.D. degrees. Barbara is a social scientist with expertise in mental health and higher education who has written extensively in both fields. Barbara is also a published mystery novelist having penned four fictional mystery novels: Hot Stones, Cold Death; Murder on the Gold Coast; Murder at the Carousel Club; Chasing Isfet in the District; and one play: When Isis Comes to Dinner. Barbara lived in the District of Columbia for ten years during which time she conceived the plot and the fictional hero of her novels, Detective Lieutenant Matthew Alexander of the D.C Police Department, because she retains fond memories of the multi-racial, multi-cultural urban environment she experienced while attending graduate school there.

Barbara served as the Director of Planning and Institutional Research at a state university in Ohio where she researched and produced a five-year comprehensive strategic plan for the university entitled "Academic Excellence in the Twenty-First Century". The focus of "Academic Excellence...." was to improve and increase the enrollment, retention, and graduation of first-generation, low-income African American college students from a public Historically Black University. Similar issues are addressed in "Desperately Searching for Higher Education among the Ruins of the Great Society" but the issues are more urgent because the future of Black children in the U.S. depends on educators and leaders in the African American community getting it right this time.

"Desperately Searching for Higher Education among the Ruins of the Great Society" was written as a CALL TO ACTION for educators and leaders in the U.S. African American community to inform them and any others that are willing to listen that Black children are not being educated in U.S. public elementary and high schools. The U.S. is operating dual education systems at the elementary and secondary levels--one for children of the well-to-do and rich who are educated in suburban and private schools and the other for the children of the low-income and poor who are educated in urban and rural schools. The data contained in this report confirms that fact. "Desperately Searching....." is filled with accurate data on the performance of Black and low-income minority students in U.S. elementary and secondary schools; data which illustrates the fact that Black students have the lowest scores of any racial/ethnic group on standardized achievement tests like the NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA that are administered to all U.S. students, especially in subject areas (mathematics and science) that prepare students to study STEM fields in college.

Barbara's intention in writing "Desperately Searching..." is to bring the research tools and data needed to address the steep degree of academic deficits being experienced by Black students in U.S. schools to the attention of African American educators and leaders in the U.S. Barbara's purpose is to stimulate discussion among African American educators and leaders around the range of issues discussed in the book that might create synergy which results in significant positive change for Black children in the U.S. elementary and secondary education system which will bring their academic achievement up to the level of White, Asian American, and other minority children who do succeed in our schools.