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LA Unified's research and highlight of successful programs for students of color.

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Center for the Transformation of Schools

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Pedro Noguera
University of California, Los Angeles
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
Center for the Transformation of Schools

Joseph Bishop
University of California, Los Angeles
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
Center for the Transformation of Schools

Tyrone Howard
University of California, Los Angeles
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies

Stanley Johnson
University of California, Los Angeles
Researcher
Center for the Transformation of Schools

Since the 2001 enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), considerable attention has been paid to the persistence of racial disparities in academic achievement. However, despite a series of reform initiatives, many children throughout the United States continue to under-perform on standardized assessments, and the effort to close the so-called achievement gap remains a national challenge. This is particularly true for many Black students, who with few exceptions, continue to perform at lower levels on most measures of academic achievement and attainment. While the issue has been the subject of several national studies and reports, viable evidenced-based solutions to the problem continue to elude educators and policymakers.

In California, despite the state's growing commitment to equity, Black children consistently lag behind their peers on standardized assessments and graduation rates. This is also the case in Los Angeles County (Figures 1, 2 and 3), the large metropolitan area that is the subject of this report. Black students in LA County are overrepresented among those who are under-prepared for college (Figure 4), who are subject to punitive forms of discipline (Figure 5), and who are chronically absent from school (Figure 6). Moreover, a disproportionate number of Black students in LA County attend schools that the state has identified as "low-performing" (See Maps) and they are also more likely to be enrolled in schools where critical resources (e.g. school counselors, nurses, social workers, highly qualified teachers, etc.) are in short supply.

Why Focus on Black Students?

We have prepared this report to call attention to the challenges facing Black students at schools in LA County, but we do not mean to suggest that they are the only ones experiencing hardships. Though Black children are disproportionately affected by a variety of disadvantages, the data reveals that many children in LA - including Latinx, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, LGBTQ youth, poor white children, and others - also face significant difficulties related to poverty, trauma and the failure of public institutions to respond adequately to their needs. Our hope is that through a detailed analysis of how school-based and environmental factors interact to shape the academic and developmental outcomes of Black children, we can devise strategies and solutions to address their needs and the needs of other disadvantaged children as well. By placing this information into the hands of policymakers and community activists we hope to begin to generate the will to bring about real change for the most vulnerable children in LA County.

The consistency of the patterns is disturbing, yet, statistics on academic achievement do not create a complete picture of what is happening to Black children in LA County. Close examination of their out-of-school experiences reveals that Black students are more likely than any other group to experience homelessness (Figure 7), to be placed in foster care (Figure 8), or to have a parent who is incarcerated (Figure 9). Furthermore, the communities where many Black children reside are also less likely to have parks and recreation facilities and are more likely to contain environmental hazards that negatively impact the health and well-being of children and their families ( see the interactive map).

While few would argue that adverse childhood experiences are irrelevant to academic performance, education policy has frequently ignored these issues and the social and psychological needs that accompany them. Although California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) prioritizes resources to schools serving the most disadvantaged students, at schools located in the poorest communities, the additional funds are insufficient to address growing needs. Black children are also not recognized as one of the groups in need of targeted support. In LA County and in much of California, Black students are vastly over-represented among children who experience hardships such as homelessness, but too often, they are concentrated in schools that are under-resourced, highly segregated, and lacking the supports necessary to adequately address and respond to their social and psychological needs.

Since 2001, considerable attention has been focused on efforts to reform schools and raise student achievement. However, far less attention and effort has been directed at addressing the out-of-school factors that influence a child's development, or the economic conditions in the neighborhoods where they live. We must do both. In the longer version of this report we reference the ways in which the accumulation of disadvantage ( see the interactive map) influences the educational and developmental outcomes of Black children in LA County. Failure to recognize how poverty, health and educational performance interact has made it more difficult for education policy to have a positive impact on the needs of the most vulnerable children. To correct this oversight, we must devise solutions that are designed to counter and mitigate the effects of these disadvantages.

A longer version of our report will be released in 2020. In it we closely examine the educational performance of Black students in the fourteen school districts in LA County (Figure 10) that serve 800 Black students or more.

Figure 10. Enrollment Rates for the 14 Los Angeles Districts by Race and Ethnicity with Highest Proportion of Black Students 2017-2018

In our review of the data related to the education and health of Black children in these 14 school districts and in LA County generally, we discovered a distinct and consistent tendency for the students with the greatest needs to be denied learning opportunities through exclusionary discipline practices (Figure 5). We also found that students in foster care, experiencing homelessness, and in special education were most likely to be suspended from school and to have the lowest academic performance on a number of indicators (Figures 1, 2 and 4).

The patterns illustrated in the chart above are by no means unique to LA County. A 2018 report from the Children's Defense Fund found that throughout the nation, similar patterns are evident, not only among Black children, but among disadvantaged children from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Place Matters: The Accumulation of Disadvantage

The Black population of LA is diverse and declining (Figure 11). Despite a significant decline, LA County is home to the second largest number of Black students in the nation (second only to Cook County, Illinois). There are 109,000 Black students in LA County, more students than in all but two of the school districts in California.

California Department of Education (2019). Retrieved from here.

It is important to note that there are a small but significant number of Black children (primarily from affluent households), who attend private or and well-resourced, racially integrated public schools. The vast majority of these students graduate from high school and enroll in four-year colleges. This report is largely not about these students. However, it should be noted that Black students who attend such schools are more likely to be eligible for admission to the UC and CSU system than their low-income peers. In this report, we focus our attention on the larger number of Black students who are concentrated in under-resourced schools in the most disadvantaged communities. Such students are overrepresented among those who lag behind their peers in their performance on standardized assessments, in completing courses needed for college, and in college graduation rates. They are also more likely to end up structurally disenfranchised - not working, not in school, and ensnared by the criminal justice system. We must intervene to reduce the likelihood of this occurrence.

Like Latinx students, the majority of Black students are enrolled in poor, racially isolated schools located in impoverished communities. Increasingly, many Black students attend schools where they are a minority (the majority are typically Latinx). Despite their small numbers, Black students at these schools are typically over-represented in categories associated with risk and failure.

When the Social Science Research Council released the Portrait of LA County in 2018, we were surprised that despite its devastating depiction of the County and its deep and profound inequality, the report received little attention from the local media, and little response from policymakers. We hope a similar fate won't occur with the release of this report. We build upon the findings from the Portrait of LA County to show that where one lives has a significant impact upon health, the quality of schools, and the availability of economic opportunity. To address this problem, we must target resources and interventions where they are needed most.

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Download the full report [PDF] Download the Executive Summary [PDF] Pedro Noguera University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Center for the Transformation of Schools Joseph Bishop University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School o

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Author of "To All the White People Teaching in the Hood"

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Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic | TED Talk

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What do rap shows, barbershop banter and Sunday services have in common? As Christopher Emdin says, they all hold the secret magic to enthrall and teach at the same time — and it’s a skill we often don’t teach to educators. A longtime teacher himself, now a science advocate and cofounder of Science…

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Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, “They don’t pay me to like the kids.” Her response: “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.’” A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

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The New York Times series about blacks in America- essays, photos, and podcast.

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s true origin.

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Posted in 2 parts.

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Watch the entire CNN/Sesame Street racism town hall | CNN

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CNN's Van Jones and Erica Hill partner with "Sesame Street" for Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism, a town hall for kids and families. Watch the town hall in its entirety below:

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Texts for talking about race and racisim

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

Talking about race and racism with children and young adults can be hard for both teachers and parents. That's why we've compiled this set of poems, informational texts, short stories, speeches, and more to help you get started. After assigning texts from this set, be sure to use the included Discussion Questions to start a dialogue.

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CommonLit | Text Sets - Texts for Talking About Race

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser. Talking about race and racism with children and young adults can be hard for both teachers and parents.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Great resources for educators, parents, allies, and students.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Since we all have an assigned racial identity, we can all benefit from learning about race. And, by learning and understanding the origins and meanings of racial inequity, we can all benefit from a shared understanding. This understanding can help make our society more equitable and can be a catalyst for change.

Explore your own identity. Reflect on your place in history:

What does it mean to feel good about myself and how can I express that I like who I am?

What are group identities and how do they describe me? Others?

How can I be proud of who I am and celebrate others?

What has happened throughout history to people like me?

How do I get to know others and allow others to get to know all of me?

Social Identities and Systems of Oppression

An oppressive system is built around the ideology that some groups are superior to others. These systems take on many forms, but they all have essentially the same structure. Let's recognize our role within them.

Race and Racial Identity

The scientific consensus is that race has no biological basis - that we are all one race, the human race. Racialized identity, however, is very real. And, in a racialized society, everyone is assigned a racial identity whether you are aware of it or not. Let's broaden our awareness.

Bias

A bias is a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone. Even people who are not deliberately prejudicial may have implicit biases. Let's learn more about this and other types of bias and their real-world impacts.

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Since we all have an assigned racial identity, we can all benefit from learning about race. And, by learning and understanding the origins and meanings of racial inequity, we can all benefit from a shared understanding. This understanding can help make our society more equitable and can be a catalyst for change.

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Understand institutional racism and how it works for the benefit of some and keep others in systems of oppression

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Anti-racism resources for parents and families

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Anti-racism resources for parents and families

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Nick Jr.

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Founded by Carol Sutton Lewis, GCP is a resource for Black and Brown children particularly boys with a focus on identity, race and education and a conscious parent approach. Recent posts include Talking to Your Children About George Floyd and Tips on Bringing Your Child to a Protest.

This 56-page free book is designed to help parents teach their children to honor differences in themselves and others and reject prejudice and intolerance. Designed for parents of kids of all ages, it offers age-specific sections from preschool through teen years.

Founded by former Viacom employee Depelsha Thomas McGruder, this site is an all around resource for supporting Black boys with political action, advocacy, mental health services, and more.

This NYC blogger with seminars, consultations, and tips is a great read, especially this list of 100 race-conscious things you can say to your child.

Offers toolkits to help multigenerational families be allies and non-racists. Topics include how to support protesters and causes for social justice at home and in communities. Their podcast, BOLD: Conversations About Race, is also a great listen.

Non-profit devoted to using books and literature to discuss and confront racism. The Conscious Kid partners with book publishers, other organizations, and children's museums. Also a great follow on Instagram.

Embrace Race provides communities and parents with resources, including toolkits, webinars, and children's books to raise children to be "informed, thoughtful and brave about race." We especially love this reading list of children's titles, these middle-grade selects, and this list of children's books featuring POC being themselves.

Excellent resource for girls on leadership and social justice and a focus on inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. Their resource section is especially helpful for parents.

Resource on talking to your child about racial bias, as written by medical doctors.

An alliance of trainers, organizers, and institutional leaders who work to create racially equitable organizations and systems.

Article from Common Sense Media with tips for parents of all ages that encourages the use of media to initiate and maintain discussions with kids about race, stereotypes and inequities.

In his book, Reynolds, who is the 2020-2021 National Ambassador for Young Person's Literature, tells the story of competing ideas about race as they have evolved in the United States from the colonial period to the present. Consider purchasing the book from a Black-owned bookshop.

Listen to Reynolds talk about racism and the protests on this family episode of The Kojo Nnamdi Show here.

Resources and tools for parents, educators, and individuals looking to further the conversation about race.
The information above is also available in the printable PDF below
Tags: Educational

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Anti-Racism Resources for Parents & Families

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Founded by Carol Sutton Lewis, GCP is a resource for Black and Brown children particularly boys with a focus on identity, race and education and a conscious parent approach. Recent posts include Talking to Your Children About George Floyd and Tips on Bringing Your Child to a Protest.

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REDLINING   IN   FRESNO

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These policies, and the redlining that cemented them, made it virtually impossible for black Americans, who came to Fresno in greater numbers after World War II, to move in anywhere but the city's southwest. One report estimated that, by the 1950s, nearly 100 percent of black Fresnans lived on the west side. Another found that in 1960 Fresno had the highest degree of black-white segregation in California.

In the '50s, the construction of Highway 99, which today runs north and south through the Central Valley, created another physical barrier between the west side and the rest of Fresno and destroyed more than 20 blocks of existing housing. Later, at the height of the Cold War, a former member of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors would refer to Highway 99 and the railroad tracks as "Fresno's Berlin Wall."

The city's schools were as divided as its neighborhoods. In 1973, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare found that Fresno Unified School District was in violation of the Civil Rights Act. Not only did the district have heavily segregated schools (Edison High School, in the city's southwest, had a population that was 99.6 percent minority students) but school administrators were assigning black and Hispanic students to "mentally retarded classes," Chacón found during the course of his research.

In the decades that followed, city plans and zoning ordinances kept the southwest isolated. Fresno's leaders concentrated the city's wealth and development farther north, catering to its affluent white neighborhoods. There, the city built shopping malls, hospitals and college campuses. The southwest got slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants. In Fresno, segregation that began with Chinese immigrants evolved over time to target Hispanic and, most explicitly and acutely, black residents.

The geographic, economic, and racial isolation of a city's black and brown residents is a pattern duplicated across the country, said Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law, which details government policies that segregated U.S. neighborhoods.

"Fresno is no different than any other place in this respect," Rothstein said in an interview. "You wouldn't have the kinds of conflicts that existed in Ferguson or Baltimore, Milwaukee or St. Paul, or any of the hundreds of others over the years if you weren't concentrating low-income young African American men in single neighborhoods where there's little hope."

Today, some argue that Shaw Avenue, an east-west thoroughfare that's one of the city's busiest, has replaced the railroad tracks as the city's dividing line. White and wealthy above it, poor, black, and Hispanic below. A 1970s-era city planning document actually refers to the street as Fresno's Mason-Dixon Line.

There are exceptions, and pockets of prosperity and poverty exist above and below Shaw, but still, the side of the street a person lives on matters.
Margaret Katcher contributed to this report.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Reis Thebault is a local politics reporter at the Washington Post.

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These policies, and the redlining that cemented them, made it virtually impossible for black Americans, who came to Fresno in greater numbers after World War II, to move in anywhere but the city's southwest. One report estimated that, by the 1950s, nearly 100 percent of black Fresnans lived on the west side.

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6 installment web series (recorded July/Aug 2020)