African American Educational Opportunity Report 2007
California’s African American Opportunity Gap
California schools enroll almost one-half million African American students. Only four states (Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New York) enroll more. Some of California’s African American students achieve the highest levels of academic success, but as a group they fare poorly on standardized test scores, rates of high school completion, enrollment in four-year universities, and college degree attainment. The widely reported gaps between African American students and their white and Asian peers on all of these common measures of school success have generated considerable discussion and dismay, but few remedies.
This report probes the nature of these gaps in achievement and proposes new directions for intervention. We use California’s publicly available state data to trace the progress of African American high school students in the Class of 2006 through high school and into college. We relate their progress to the educational resources and opportunities that California high schools have provided them.
Specifically, we report two types of analyses: the main analysis compares African American high school students’ experiences to those of white and Asian students ; the second analysis focuses on a small set of high schools (107 out of 1089 comprehensive high schools) that enroll one-half of the state’s African American high school students.
While reinforcing the findings of other studies, our new analyses reveal the alarming context of the much lamented “achievement gap”: California’s African American students have limited access to the resources and opportunities they need to graduate from high school prepared to succeed in higher education and careers, and ready for significant participation in public life. Moreover, the analyses suggest that solving the problem of the achievement gap requires a two-pronged strategy—one that improves California’s education infrastructure overall and, at the same time, targets resources and support to students concentrated in the much smaller proportion of high schools that suffer from an even greater lack of essential educational resources and enroll large numbers of African American students.
Together, our analyses answer a number of important questions:
Which High Schools do California’s African American Students Attend?
- California’s 139,334 African American high school students are distributed across the state’s high schools. In 2006, only 62 of the state’s 1089 comprehensive high schools did not enroll any African American students. On the other hand, only 1% of the state’s high schools have African American majorities.
- California’s African American students are concentrated in high-minority and high-poverty schools (schools far more vulnerable to patterns of low achievement). African American students are more likely than any other group to attend high schools with high concentrations of low-income students of color. In fact, half of all of African American high school students are concentrated in a relatively small number (107) of predominantly minority schools.
- African American students are more likely than any other racial group to attend “Program Improvement” (PI) schools that fail to meet academic achievement targets set by the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Do Gaps in School Resources and Opportunities Mirror California’s Racial Gaps in School Success?
- A large percentage of African American students attend schools that offer lower levels of basic educational resources and opportunities.
- 38% of African American students attend overcrowded high schools, more than twice the population of white students attending these schools.
- On average, the 107 high schools that enroll half of the state’s African American students have smaller proportions of fully qualified teachers than high schools where most students are white and Asian.
- African American students have limited access to college preparatory resources and opportunities.
- African American high school students are more likely than any other group of students to attend schools where large proportions of college preparatory courses are taught by teachers without proper qualifications.
- The 107 high schools that enroll half of the state’s African American students are less likely than the rest of California’s high schools to provide sufficient college preparatory courses.
- African American students are consistently underrepresented in the advanced college preparatory math and science courses their schools offer
Are California’s African American Students Able to Reach their Educational Goals?
- Some African American high school students in California perform at the highest academic levels. However, as a group, African Americans score below their white and Asian counterparts on achievement tests and complete fewer college preparatory courses. Fewer African Americans graduate high school and fewer move on to colleges and universities than their white and Asian peers.
Download the full report as a PDF (2.8 MB, 20 Pages)