NAACP’s call to end learning gap in S.F.
Specific strategies sought to boost black proficiency
Despite years of targeted programs, San Francisco district schools have failed to close an achievement gap in which black students lag behind their peers and fall short of state learning standards.
The gap has persisted for a quarter century, even as scores across all ethnic subgroups have risen, according to a report to the school board by Superintendent Vincent Matthews. As educators prepare to implement new fixes, the San Francisco NAACP is calling for the district to declare a state of emergency.
Matthews, the second black schools superintendent in San Francisco history, underlined one sentence in his report that critics say sounds all too familiar: “The district needs to develop specific strategies to address the outcomes for African American students.”
Seventy-four percent of black students did not meet 2016-17 state assessment standards in at least one subject area, Matthews noted. Similarly, 61 percent of Latino students and 65 percent of Pacific Islander students did not meet those standards.
Yet San Francisco boasts one of the highest-scoring urban districts in the state. The city was the only urban district where more than half the students were proficient in both math and English in the most recent standardized tests, school officials have pointed out.
That’s because of higher-scoring peers of African American students. Only 14.6 percent of whites and 16 percent of Asian Americans failed to meet standards in one subject area, Matthews noted.
“Why the focus on African American students?” the superintendent said. “African American students have the largest achievement gap district-wide between schools and within schools. The gap has been persistent in the last 25 years.”
The push to close the divide has endured, too. It goes back to the 1970s, when the San Francisco NAACP sued the school district for alleged discriminatory practices and purposeful segregation. The result was a 1983 federal consent decree that capped enrollment at no more than 45 percent of one race at any San Francisco public school as a part of a desegregation plan.
As the population of Chinese American students grew, their parents sued the school district in the mid-1990s, arguing the decree prevented their children from enrolling in the school of their choice. That led to renegotiation of the decree in 2001 that eliminated the district’s consideration of race in school assignments. Court supervision over the policies ended in 2005.
With the district back in charge of school assignments, it has given preference to school choice for those who live in census tracts where the student population has the lowest test scores — a method that has not effectively diversified schools.
The newest call for action came at the Nov. 14 school board meeting at which Matthews presented his report. San Francisco NAACP President Amos Brown told the board that it should declare a state of emergency, a largely symbolic gesture intended to bring attention to the issue.
“It’s not that the children are failing,” Brown said. “We are failing. This board is failing. This city government is failing. And you have professionals in the school district who have woefully failed when it comes to respecting the worth and the dignity of African American students.
“Now it’s time for us to fess up and show some fruits of repentance,” Brown said. “And at the top of the list: Declare a state of emergency.”
The school district has tried several strategies in recent years to improve African American students’ achievement. In 2013, it created the African American Achievement and Leadership Initiative, run by education officials who recommend ways to eliminate inequity in the school system.
One of their initiatives was the African American Male Achievement Program, which was started in 2016. As part of the program, male African American educators work with black students in elective classes to foster a “positive sense of purpose in their roles as valuable family and community members.”
At the start of 2015, the district tapped Landon Dickey, a Lowell High School and Harvard Business School graduate, to lead the African American Achievement and Leadership Initiative. His annual salary was $100,898 in 2016.
Dickey was charged, in part, with implementing My Brother’s Keeper, a mentoring program for young people of color that was started by former President Barack Obama.
“Everyone understands the magnitude of this situation,” said school board President Shamann Walton.
African Americans accounted for only 7 percent of the district’s student population of 55,613 in 2016-17, compared with 16 percent in 1998-99. The declining numbers reflect the exodus of African Americans from the city, where the black population has dwindled to under 6 percent.
But African Americans have recently had stronger representation in the district’s leadership. Matthews was hired in April. Two of the seven school board members — Walton and Stevon Cook — are black.
Matthews said “systemic barriers to equity” in district schools help explain the African American performance gap. He cited research from Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, that concluded, “The greatest predictor of the blackwhite achievement gap is the disparity in poverty rates at black and white students’ schools.”
Matthews said racial inequities exist in other areas. Overall, 1.8 percent of students were suspended last year, but among African Americans the total was 9 percent. Seventy-one percent of eligible African American students graduated, compared with 94.7 percent of Asian American students and 83.8 percent of whites.
Some ways to combat the equity gap, Matthews said, include changing the culture at campuses. Teachers may develop unconscious stereotypes of black youths that lead to disproportionate disciplinary action and lowered expectations for African Americans, the superintendent said.
And responsibility for black youths does not lie with schools alone, said Matthews, who stressed the importance of programs that help families and school officials collaborate on addressing students’ needs.
Underserved schools — those in neighborhoods with large concentrations of minorities and a “history of failing to serve these students” — also need more experienced and diverse leaders, the superintendent said. At those schools, the average teacher has less than six years of experience. Districtwide, the average is 12 years, Matthews said.
Several parents and community leaders attended the meeting at which Matthews gave his report and urged the school board to act.
Robvina Parker, a parent leader at Innovate Public Schools, a procharter nonprofit, said she sent three of her four children to public schools but opted to send her last child to a charter school because of “struggles I had with the district to recognize that my daughter needed a different choice.”
“I’m standing with hundreds of other parents who are tired of the achievement gap,” said Parker, who is African American. “I’m pleading with you to take some immediate action to close these achievement gaps.”
“I’m pleading with you to take some immediate action to close these achievement gaps.” Robvina Parker, African American parent leader at Innovate Public Schools, a pro-charter nonprofit