Academic gaps ‘allowed to linger’ among California’s Black students over past decade, report says

The more Sacramento spends on education, the further behind black students become.  It is almost a racist statement to raise expenditures in order to push black students to the back of the bus.

“In the areas of chronic absenteeism, suspension and reading proficiency, the rates for Black students in California remain largely the same as they were a decade ago. That is the focus of a new report, Black Minds Matter 2025, which provides new insight and recommendations on education for Black students in California a decade after the first iteration of the report was published by Education Trust-West.

“This report really meets the moment that we’re in when we’re seeing so many cuts to education funding and programs that are inevitably going to impact Black students,” said Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, director of research at the prominent nonprofit behind the report that advocates for equity in education.

Ten years ago, Black students were nearly three times more likely than white students to be suspended, and while suspension rates among Black students have since declined from 14% to 9%, the rate is still three times higher than white students, according to data from the California Department of Education included in the report. The chronic absenteeism rates are similar: in 2016-17, Black students had the second-highest rate of chronic absenteeism of any student group, just under Native American students — a statistic that remained the same in 2023-24.

The cuts are not because education is getting moire money.  They are because the added education money is going toward racism, bigotry, DEI, promotion of “social” goals instead of education.  Add to that the money and classroom time spent on sexual grooming—any wonder black students want no part of this radicalization of education?

Academic gaps ‘allowed to linger’ among California’s Black students over past decade, report says

Betty Márquez Rosales, EdSource,  2/27/25  https://edsource.org/2025/academic-gaps-allowed-to-linger-among-californias-black-students-over-past-decade-report-says/727505

February 27, 2025 – Parents joined a lawsuit against LAUSD and superintendent Alberto Carvalho, claiming that the district was misusing its Proposition 28 funds. 

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In the areas of chronic absenteeism, suspension and reading proficiency, the rates for Black students in California remain largely the same as they were a decade ago. That is the focus of a new report, Black Minds Matter 2025, which provides new insight and recommendations on education for Black students in California a decade after the first iteration of the report was published by Education Trust-West.

“This report really meets the moment that we’re in when we’re seeing so many cuts to education funding and programs that are inevitably going to impact Black students,” said Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, director of research at the prominent nonprofit behind the report that advocates for equity in education.

Ten years ago, Black students were nearly three times more likely than white students to be suspended, and while suspension rates among Black students have since declined from 14% to 9%, the rate is still three times higher than white students, according to data from the California Department of Education included in the report. The chronic absenteeism rates are similar: in 2016-17, Black students had the second-highest rate of chronic absenteeism of any student group, just under Native American students — a statistic that remained the same in 2023-24.

“None of the opportunity gaps or outcome gaps explored in this report are new — all have been allowed to linger over the past decade,” concluded the report authors.

Black students represent about 5% of California’s student population from transitional kindergarten to 12th grade. That totals about 287,400 students, with about a third of them living in Los Angeles County, per 2023-24 state data. About 150,000 Black students are enrolled at institutions of higher education, both public and private.

“We constantly have in the front of our minds that there are students and families and communities behind every single data point,” said Valenzuela-Stookey. “For that reason, it felt really important to not mince words and just bring to bear the information that we have about what conditions students and families are facing and are up against; despite the fact that they enter those systems with really ambitious aspirations, something is pushing against them, and that something is systemic.”

The “ambitious aspirations” Valenzuela-Stookey mentioned refers to a finding by The United Negro College Fund in which 9 in 10 Black students agreed that earning a college degree is important, plus additional studies that found Black parents “are highly engaged and invested in their children’s educations, particularly in the early years,” per the report.

The report, published Thursday, highlights multiple key findings, including:

• The percentage of Black students in California at grade level in math increased from 16% to 18% in the decade since 2015-16 but has remained the lowest of all student groups
• The gap between California’s Black and white students who have met or exceeded the state’s reading proficiency exams, known as California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, has not changed significantly since 1998
• Three in 4 Black students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, which is 13 percentage points higher than the statewide average
• The rate of Black students completing A-G course sequences in high school, which are required to attend the University of California and California State University systems, has increased by just 4 percentage points in the last decade
• While the number of Black children enrolled in transitional kindergarten more than doubled from 2021 to 2023-24, the rate still makes up less than half of the number of Black 4-year-olds who are eligible to enroll
• Black elementary school students report feeling sadness more frequently than any other student group
• The number of Black teachers remained disproportionately lower than the share of Black students statewide; just over a quarter of school districts employ Black teachers at a rate proportionate to their Black student population
• The rate at which Black students participate in dual enrollment increased by only 6 percentage points in the last seven school years, from about 11% to nearly 17%, while other student groups increased between 8 and 14 percentage points
• Black college students in California face the highest rates of food and housing insecurity

“This status quo is not an accident — it is the consequence of systems designed to produce unequal outcomes operating largely unchecked for centuries,” the report’s authors wrote. “It is also the consequence of incremental changes made in place of what’s called for: much more fundamental transformation.”

A deeper look into some of the data cited in the report reveals alarming trends. For example, dual enrollment rates increased among all student racial groups between 2015-16 and 2021-22, per an analysis of state data by Policy Analysis for California Education, but Black students recorded the lowest rate of growth — at nearly 17% in 2021-22, just under the rate of dual enrollment participation for Asian students in 2015-16.

Also, according to data from the California Community Colleges, within their first year in community college, Black students were completing and passing transfer-level coursework at a rate lower than their peers, with a difference of 30 percentage points between Asian students at 77% and Black students at 47%.

While the report’s authors acknowledged the pandemic exacerbated some of the academic gaps, many existed long before Covid lockdowns began, and the data included in the report reflected that longevity. “It was really important for us to make sure that people had a long view of how entrenched these systemic inequities are because the solutions to them should follow from how long they’ve been baked into our systems,” said Valenzuela-Stookey.

In addition to sharing the stark disparities, the report’s authors highlighted a handful of programs and initiatives they believe are working to close the gaps.

These include a teacher residency program called The Village Initiative and created in collaboration with the Watts of Power Foundation; Los Angeles Unified School District; and California State University, Dominguez Hills. Fifteen Black male teachers were part of the program in 2023, and the partnership estimates they will place 113 fully credentialed, Black teachers in school over the next decade.

Farther north, at Berkeley High School, the campus’ African American Studies Department is credited for the high rate of graduating within four years among the Black student population, at nearly 95% in the latest school year, compared to the statewide average of just over 86%.

One of the overarching recommendations proposed by the authors was the creation of a Commission on Black Education Transformation, made up in part by Black students, parents and educators. This would be a standing state commission with the authority to make actionable decisions, including the allocation of resources to ensure follow-through from state and local agencies on policies related to academic progress for Black students.

Other recommendations include:

• Mandating that all high schools incorporate the 15-course A-G curriculum required for eligibility to the UC and CSU systems
• Increasing award amounts for the existing Cal Grant program to aid students with non-tuition costs
• Prioritizing the hiring and retention of Black educators in both TK-12 and higher education
• Expanding pandemic-era supports, such as before- and after-school programming and academic tutoring
• Requiring that all school staff receive training to end the disproportionate impact on Black students of punitive disciplinary practices
• Modifying the state’s Local Control Funding Formula to target funds based on an index of metrics such as levels of adult educational attainment and homeownership rates
• Instructing school districts to report “evidence-based strategies” aimed at supporting Black students in their Local Control and Accountability Plans

Valenzuela-Stookey noted that her team sees both the progress and persistent gaps over the last decade “as a reminder that policy change is just the first step in closing a lot of these opportunity gaps that are highlighted in the report, and implementation and on-the-ground practice work is really the necessary next step if any of that is to come to fruition.”