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| Student presentation @ King-Drew Magnet |
By Sikivu Hutchinson
If African American students in the Los Angeles
Unified School District were a single district, that district would be the eleventh
largest in California. This stat comes from a recent analysis
of LAUSD test results that unsurprisingly confirms the district’s systemic
failure of Black students. Over half of South L.A. schools with the largest
concentration of Black students were rated “poor” in academic achievement. These
schools received a red rating. By contrast, only fifteen schools were rated red
for white students. Districtwide, only two out of ten African American
students are proficient or on grade level in math, while only three out of ten
are proficient in English. For Black students transitioning to college, the
implications are dire.
Yet, where is the outrage??
Although African American high school graduation rates
have increased, only half of Black LAUSD graduates have the grades and A-G (or
college preparation) classes required for admission to UCs and CSUs. This combination
of low access to college readiness resources, minimal
access to college and guidance counselors, as well as high quality instruction,
after school enrichment and tutoring programs, is informed by the systemic
criminalization of African American students. While the LAUSD phased out willful
defiance as an “offense” that students can be suspended for, Black students
continue to be suspended at higher rates than non-black students. Moreover, widespread
district practices such as random searches (which the board voted to phase
out in July after community organizing by student activist coalitions like Students Deserve and the Students
Not Suspects campaign) and over-policing by school resource officers further
undermine student learning, safety, and engagement. The dwindling number of Black
students at traditionally African American campuses is another factor. For the
most part, faculty of all ethnicities are not trained to be culturally responsive
to the needs and communities of Black students. Despite the millions poured
into professional development training, faculty and administrators are not
versed on how structures of segregation, institutional racism, state violence,
sexual violence, and economic insecurity impact the psychological, emotional, and
academic wellbeing of Black students.
In addition, Black “Generation Z” youth are more
likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender, making
them more vulnerable to bullying, harassment, and emotional abuse. Higher levels
of LGBTQIA+ identification among Black youth defies mainstream, Eurocentric
stereotypes about queer identity. It also dovetails with the rising number of
queer Black parents who are raising children in communities where they are “invisibilized”
by anti-queer public policies, conservative religious traditions, economic
inequality, and minimal to nonexistent social services. While the district has
developed some programming and outreach for high school age LGBTQIA+ students,
there is little to no culturally responsive programming or professional
development that addresses the lived experiences of queer, trans, and nonbinary
African American students in grades K-8. Students in these grades are even more
underserved because teachers and administrators may not have been trained to be
conscious about or attentive to addressing homophobia and transphobia on their
campuses.
Why is this relevant to achievement? Because it represents
the many challenges confronting a district that is ill-equipped to address a
changing student body and the intersectional issues it faces. As greater
numbers of elementary and middle school African American students grapple with
gender identity and sexuality in homophobic, transphobic school communities, it
will have a profound impact on their academic outcomes.
In a district that is still steeped in rote learning
and tracking, the social-emotional wellbeing of African American LAUSD students
has always been given short shrift. Only a handful of elementary and middle
schools have a fifty percent or higher rate of English proficiency for African
American students. They include Open Charter Middle School, WISH Community Charter,
156th Street School, Kentwood Elementary, Palms Middle School, Open
Charter Middle School, Cowan Magnet, Loyola Village Magnet, and Broadacres Magnet.
This small handful of schools (with the exception of Palms) are the only ones
in the district with a fifty percent or more math proficiency rate for Black
students.
At the high school level, only King Drew Magnet High
School, TEACH Tech Charter, USC Hybrid College Prep, Palisades High, Hollywood
High, University High and CATCH Charter High have at least a fifty percent or
higher rate of English proficiency for Black students. According to the data, no high school has an
African American student math proficiency rate of 50% or higher. Astoundingly,
some Black “leaders” within the LAUSD say that increasing Black math
proficiency to 5% per year is an acceptable goal.
What is the district’s response to these gross
disparities? In April, the LAUSD School Board sponsored a resolution
entitled “Closing the Opportunity and Achievement Gap for African American Students”.
The resolution is the umpteenth district measure over a fifteen-year period
that is designed to address “systemic inequities” faced by Black students. It
calls for a “five-year plan” to increase the numbers of Black students in
gifted and talented programs, honors classes, advanced placement classes, and
early education programs. As with all of
the previous resolutions that were passed to supposedly improve conditions in
LAUSD for Black students, this plan is big on ambition and short on accountability
to the community for how it will be implemented and evaluated (backers of the resolution
have floated the creation of “African American Family” groups to participate in
its implementation, but the district has provided no specifics on how this would
play out).
The district’s cluelessness on redressing math literacy
is especially egregious. Veteran math educator Dr. Michael
Batie analyzed math proficiency for a fifteen-year period in his
publication the “Black Zero Index”. Dr. Batie views
the district’s piecemeal efforts as akin to rearranging deck chairs on the
Titanic. He has proposed creating a school district within Board District One,
which has the largest Black student population in the LAUSD. Rather than emphasizing
“how poorly Black students are doing”, these dismal performance stats should be
a call to action and catalyst for forward-looking initiatives.
Of course, starting a breakaway district is no easy or
overnight task. It requires a petition to the L.A. County Office of Education School District
Reorganization Committee and the collection of fifteen thousand signatures.
In the meantime, improving math achievement for Black students requires the kind
of bold restructuring that George McKenna, the board’s sole African American
member (who is running unopposed for reelection in March after challenger
Tunette Powell was disqualified
for allegedly not having enough signatures to qualify for the ballot), has steadfastly
refused to pursue. Under McKenna’s watch, Black students have stagnated, victim
of his empty bluster, bravado, and fiddling-while-Rome-burns posturing.
Batie believes the district should prioritize providing
schools with math specialists at every level in order to improve math literacy
and competency among elementary and middle school instructors who may be assigned
to teach math with no math background. Connecting math to real world practice
and application—instead of emphasizing rote instruction that simply has
students look at numbers on the page without seeing patterns or context—incorporating
games and practical exercises, contests, manipulatives, and building exercises
encourages students to stay mentally focused and internalize basic math skills
as a foundation for higher math in high school and college.
For Batie, providing parents
with strategies that empower them to assist their child in math literacy is a
top priority. These skills are critical for equipping parents with the
tools from birth through high school to help youth develop the rigor required to
achieve math proficiency.
Ultimately, the district’s failure of African American
students in math and English has national implications for Black economic self-determination.
If Black students continue to be cheated out of educational justice in public
schools, more parents will retreat into independent charters and private
schools, hastening a vicious cycle of divestment. And if Black students remain underserved in math,
science, and English, they will be unable to develop critical thinking and
analysis skills, successfully complete college, or compete in STEM fields that
have few Black faces. In a political climate where public education has been gutted
by neoliberal forces of privatization and corporate control, the miseducation
of Black students is a criminal enterprise that demands accountability from district
“leaders” who continue to be asleep at the switch.
Sikivu Hutchinson is the founder of the Women’s Leadership Project program for
South L.A. girls of color and co-facilitator of the Black
LGBTQIA+ Parent and Family Group
