Marcus Epps, a resident in the Black Educator Teacher Residency, teaches a math lesson to a third grade class at Castle Elementary School in Bakersfield.
Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
California needs to do much better for Black students, and the efforts to do so as of late are few, far between and watered down.
For years, our state has been looked to as a leader on education equity and pointed to as a model for other states on equitable funding and other programs. Yet from its inception, the Local Control Funding Formula has left out Black students, the student group denied the most support and resources from schools. And despite years of “equity” being an increasingly heard buzzword in Sacramento, we are still seeing alarmingly low progress on academic outcomes.
Now, in the wake of increasing hostility around acknowledging the legacy of slavery and its continued impact on Black people in America, the recent rollback of affirmative action, and an all-out assault against teaching the truth in classrooms around the country, California leaders need to be as bold with their actions as they are with their rhetoric.
Take, for instance, the current state of California’s ethnic studies course requirement. Ethnic studies help broaden awareness of the experiences of Black people, ensuring Black students see themselves reflected in the curriculum, and improve Black students’ academic achievement. In 2021, state leaders approved the course as a requirement that all graduating high school seniors must complete by 2030.
While the California Department of Education has taken some initial steps to support implementing this new requirement, there is much more to do to make universal ethnic studies a reality — as Gov. Gavin Newsom recently pointed out in a letter to districts. Implementing ethnic studies now requires a concerted effort from state and district leaders. First, district leaders must prioritize developing locally adapted curriculum, adopting high-quality instructional materials, and ensuring teachers have high-quality professional development opportunities.
Districts should also consider innovative ways to fully incorporate and align ethnic studies with other offerings, like dual enrollment, so that students can take college-level ethnic studies courses and simultaneously fulfill the high school graduation requirement while earning college credits. Districts should also be communicating with students and their families to ensure they are aware of the new requirement and upcoming opportunities to take the course.
Lastly, these and other implementation needs come with costs that the state has not yet fully addressed. Legislators should provide targeted financial resources in the state’s next budget cycle to guarantee ethnic studies implementation is fully funded and on track.
Effectively implementing ethnic studies is not a panacea that will eradicate racism from California schools. But it is a tangible step, one that is all the more important in the wake of an increasingly aggressive backlash against addressing the hundreds of years of oppression experienced by Black people in America. In fact, numerous California district leaders are welcoming this backlash through their own discriminatory actions, with multiple school boards around the state restricting teachers from discussing race in their classrooms. To be frank, this is not just a Florida problem.
We seem to shy away from a more honest conversation in our own state, at times almost dismissing racist occurrences as outliers and pointing fingers at other states from a supposed mantle of progressivism and anti-racism. But for the Black students in Anaheim who were threatened with images of guns and racial slurs from fellow students, for the Black students in Dixon who were posted about online, labeled as monkeys by a fellow student, these occurrences are not outliers, they are part of what living in California means to them. Our commitment to valuing diversity must include not just denouncing these incidents, but taking tangible, proactive actions to prevent them while uplifting Black students.
California can truly be at the forefront of the national movement to definitively reject the white nationalism that is increasingly creeping into the mainstream — but only if we prioritize tangible action as much as compelling rhetoric. We should be the state that leads the way in not just passing legislation, but in developing and implementing policies and practices that center serving Black students and other marginalized students, knowing that ultimately all students will do better if we prioritize the students currently at the margins.
From funding decisions and ethnic studies implementation to the policy changes suggested by the California Reparations Task Force, the state has a myriad of tangible strategies to pull from that are completely legal even in the face of the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action — and now is the time to double down on such strategies. After all, as goes California, so goes the nation.
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Natalie Wheatfall-Lum is director of TK-12 education policy at The Education Trust–West, a statewide research, policy and advocacy organization focusing on educational justice and closing achievement and opportunity gaps for underserved students, especially students from lower-income communities.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Students at La Salle Avenue Elementary listen to a class presentation. The school is one of 53 schools in the first tier of the Black Student Achievement Plan.
KATE SEQUEIRA/EDSOURCE
The Los Angeles Unified School District is considering broadening the language associated with the Black Student Achievement Plan in an attempt to avoid investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, a move supporters fear could steer the focus of the program away from Black student achievement and wellness.
The potential change in the Black Student Achievement Plan comes after Parents Defending Education, a conservative group with a track record of challenging schools’ efforts to promote equity, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in July, claiming the program violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because it specifically supports Black students.
“We are just starting to see the positive impact of BSAP, creating a positive and welcoming learning environment and greater access to culturally and racially responsive coursework and field trips due to dedicated BSAP staff members and community partners,” said school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin in a statement to EdSource.
“With continued investments and support — not diluted or threatened programming —I look forward to seeing our Black students achieve in the ways that we all know is possible.”
While program supporters say the complaint by Parents Defending Education is largely unsubstantiated, they fear any efforts to alter it in response could have consequences for students in Los Angeles and beyond.
An LAUSD spokesperson said in an email to EdSource that the mission and operations of the program will not change and that “the district is ensuring that the associated language aligns with the law and practice by clarifying that BSAP operates in accordance with the District’s Nondiscrimination policy, based on applicable federal and state laws.”
The Education Department has already warned districts to avoid programs that focus on one student group. In August, a month after Parents Defending Education filed the complaint, the department released a guidance letter to school districts in response to an uptick in complaints.
“Schools may violate Title VI when they separate students based on race or treat individual students or groups of students differently based on race,” the guidance reads. “Schools also may violate Title VI when they create, encourage, accept, tolerate, or fail to correct a racially hostile educational environment.”
The letter also adds that “a school-sponsored or recognized group or program with a special emphasis on race, such as a student club or mentorship opportunity, that is open to all students, typically would not violate Title VI simply because of its race-related theme.”
The complaint
The complaint lodged by Parents Defending Education claims LAUSD’s Black Student Achievement Plan discriminates against students of other races. EdSource reached out to Parents Defending Education requesting an interview but did not receive a response.
The program “directly responds to the unique needs of Black students but not students of other races,” the complaint alleges.
“The District makes clear that the program is designed ‘to address the longstanding disparities in educational outcomes between Black students and their non-Black peers.’… And the District notes that the program is meant to address ‘[t]he perennial trend of black student underperformance; and to achieve ‘racial equity.’”
The complaint against LAUSD includes two pieces of documentation: screenshots of the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan website as well as an overview of the program.
But supporters of the district’s plan say the complaint lacks teeth — especially as it does not include a claim that anyone suffered or was discriminated against because of the program.
Amir Whitaker of the ACLU of Southern California’s Senior Policy Counsel said he doubts the U.S. Department of Education will choose to investigate the district.
Parents Defending Education’s goal, he said was about creating “hysteria about the complaint.”
Parents Defending Education, which describes itself as a “national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas,” has levied complaints against educational agencies throughout the country, including in Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont and Oregon.
“I think a lot of other districts and states are really reluctant to kind of engage in something that’s very race specific because of the ways in which we as a country …are not comfortable with having race conversations, despite the disproportion of Black students who are in special education … the number of Black students who are suspended, the high rates of Black students who are chronically absent,” said Tyrone Howard, a professor of education at UCLA.
“So I wish we had just as much energy and anger around those data as we do around the fact that we think that (a law) might be violated.”
Program’s impact
The Los Angeles Unified School District board approved the Black Student Achievement Plan in February 2021 after widespread community calls to action and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial reckoning that followed.
The Black Student Achievement Plan cut the district police budget by more than 30% and vowed to uplift Black student achievement, create “culturally responsive curriculum” and fund a team of counselors, climate advocates and psychiatric social workers at 53 top-priority schools that collectively educate a third of LAUSD’s Black student population.
“The ultimate beauty is that commitment to BSAP will … not only serve the Black students that have been disproportionately underserved for far too long. It has lots of implications on the district just improving as a whole,” said Christian Flagg, the director of training at Community Coalition, a foundation that aims to “upend systemic racism” and played a key role in the plan’s establishment.
In 2011, a decade before the plan was established, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — which also received the Parents Defending Education complaint — conducted an investigation into LAUSD.
The investigation found discrepancies in the treatment and experience of Black students in comparison to their peers, including the percentage of students admitted to the Gifted and Talented Education program, availability of technological resources, newness of textbooks, prevalence of teacher absenteeism and rates of discipline.
In response to the investigation, LAUSD offered to enter an agreement to resolve the concerns.
A survey of 2,300 students across 100 LAUSD campuses found that since the Black Student Achievement Plan rolled out, 87% ofBlack students had benefited from the program. Still, nearly half the students also said their schools do not have enough resources for Black students.
Lindsey Weatherspoon, a senior at Venice High School who said she has benefited from the Black Student Achievement Plan, credits her campus BSAP counselor for helping her and her peers attend events at which some Historically Black Colleges and Universities made on-the-spot admissions offers to seniors.
Weatherspoon said she strongly hopes LAUSD will “stand strong in their decision to have BSAP and fund BSAP, and it’s not a situation where BSAP gets cut back.”
“I hope, in fact, it gets expanded continuously to more schools, and the program constantly evolves because BSAP is not just something that happened overnight. It’s been years in the making. And it’s been the labor of love of several groups and community members and students and teachers pushing to get this program made.”
The BSAP counselor, she said, gives students more personalized counseling and creates opportunities for Black students to spend time together, which is essential because “it’s really easy to feel disconnected from other Black students when you barely see any.”
Weatherspoon said, “The thought that it could … be degraded from its original purpose or its original use is just mind-blowing and heartbreaking.”
Moving forward
The Black Student Achievement Plan being compromised, either as a result of board action or the complaint itself, could lead to greater consequences for both the district and for the nation, the program’s supporters say.
Channing Martinez, co-director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, said that the program is “not saying that Latinx students or white students or other students don’t deserve equal access to opportunity, but it is saying that Black students have not had equal access.”
He added that while the district may be concerned about Parents Defending Education’s complaint, LAUSD could also face lawsuits or complaints from organizations supporting the program if they dilute the program.
“In 2020, you had George Floyd, and it was pretty easy in the board’s mind to defund the school police as a measure of saying that they’re going to stand with Black students, but this year we don’t have George Floyd. But that doesn’t mean that the lives of Black students don’t matter,” Martinez said.
“It does really put us in a really tight spot in which we want to believe in the Black Student Achievement Program. But at the same time, it almost feels as if we are stuck in this program, and that they are using this program to say ‘Look, we’re doing something for Black students.’”
Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed an “equity multiplier” that would grant $300 million in ongoing funding to the state’s poorest students in an effort to uplift Black student achievement. But some critics of the proposal said it would not do enough to specifically support Black students.
Howard, the UCLA education professor, described the nature of the complaint by Parents Defending Education as racist because there has been little opposition to other programs designed to support different groups of students who are more vulnerable, including students with disabilities and those struggling with homelessness.
Programs like the Black Student Achievement Plan are hard to come by, Howard said. And if the complaint succeeds, he is concerned it could deter other schools throughout the state and nation from developing similar programs.
“Essentially, it says we’re fine with Black failure. We’re fine with Black underperformance. We’re fine with Black students consistently not experiencing schools in a way that their peers do,” Howard said. “That’s to me the bigger takeaway message. And why do we feel so comfortable with that?”
Teachers Preston Jackson, right, and Dave Carson confer during a P.E. class at California Middle School in Sacramento.
Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource
Petrina Miller remembers, as a young teacher in Los Angeles Unified, helping another teacher during district testing and noticing that the teacher was giving Black students and other students of color the answers. Miller asked her why she was doing that.
“Let them have a productive struggle,” Miller said. “Let them try, and whatever score they get is what they get. And that’s fine.”
The teacher said, “Poor little babies, they don’t know any better,” in a way that made Miller uncomfortable. On another day, the same teacher used a racist term to refer to Miller, who is Black.
This is the first part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.
Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.
The second story in the series features the stories of five Black teachers, who will talk about their experiences in the classroom. The final story will look at what California and school districts are doing to recruit and retain Black teachers, and what still needs to be done.
The incidents were reported to the principal, but the teacher continued to work at the school. Miller isn’t sure if she was ever disciplined.
California and other states have been trying to recruit and retain Black teachers for years, but the numbers aren’t improving. Among the factors impeding this goal, along with the cost of teacher preparation, is a lack of support and respect for Black teachers once they are in the classroom, according to teachers.
“Black teachers leave the profession because they don’t feel supported for what they are able to bring to the table in terms of their unique experiences, and they leave because of the fact that they are not seen as equal to their colleagues,” said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher who is president of Associated Chino Teachers.
In the 2020-21 school year, the most recent data available, 3.8% of all teachers in California were Black, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Black students made up 5.2% of the state’s student population that year, according to the California Department of Education.
Number of Black teachers declining nationwide
The state is doing better than the nation as a whole. Just over 6% of U.S. teachers were Black in the 2021-21 school year; 1.3% of U.S. teachers were Black men. Black students made up 15% of the students that year. The number of Black teachers in the U.S. has been declining for years.
A growing body of research shows that having a teacher of color in the classroom is important to students of color, resulting in higher test scores and a greater likelihood of graduating from college. Research also shows that having Black teachers in the classroom has a positive impact on all students, regardless of their race, said Travis Bristol, an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley, who has done extensive research on the topic.
“The framing, I think historically, has been that Black teachers are just good for Black students,” Bristol said. “And while that is true, it is also true that Black teachers are lowering the suspension rates of students who are not Black.”
Roadblocks to teaching begin early
The first hurdle for potential Black teachers comes early, while they are still students in K-12 schools, Bristol said.
“We suspend and expel a disproportionate number of Black children,” he said. “There is evidence, there’s research that if you are suspended and expelled, it decreases the likelihood that you then move on to pursue a higher education.”
The cost of teacher preparation is a major roadblock to a credential. Tuition, the cost of required tests and unpaid student teaching have kept many Black people out of the profession, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource.
Black teachers owe an average of $43,000 more in college debt than white graduates 12 years after graduation, according to the Learning Policy Institute, a nonprofit education research organization. The low salary of new teachers and the high amount of college debt associated with five years of college can dissuade Black people from becoming teachers. Many also aren’t financially able to quit their jobs to complete the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required to complete a credential.
Brooke Sims, a first-grade teacher in Stockton, who also serves as a mentor teacher, says she’s still struggling to repay student loans after 16 years of teaching.
“I definitely believe free classes, free courses or free programs … would help recruit and retain more teachers,” she said.
Lack of funds pushes Black teachers into internships
To help pay the bills, many Black teachers take an internship instead of the traditional route to a credential, which includes student teaching with a mentor teacher. Interns work as full-time teachers while undergoing teacher preparation. They are paid, but they are put into classrooms with little preparation during the first few years of teaching.
“They hire you on Friday, you are in a classroom on Monday,” said Miller, who started her career with LA Unified as an intern 26 years ago. “You have maybe a week. It felt that quick. Along the way, you went to teach, went to training and learned on the job.”
A lack of mentors meant Miller met with the one appointed by the program about once every three months. Later, a traveling mentor was hired by the program and visited the school monthly, but primarily to drop off materials, she said.
“As a teacher of color, it was a struggle,” Miller said. “I had to try to find my own support from someone else.”
Turnover rates in K–12 schools for teachers of color are higher than their white counterparts. In 2022 the turnover rate for Black teachers was 22%. The turnover rate for white teachers is 15%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Black teachers interviewed for the 2023 State of the American Teacher Survey reported significantly higher rates of burnout than white teachers and were more likely to report low salaries as a source of stress.
Teachers sometimes feel undervalued, disrespected
Teachers interviewed by EdSource said their work has been scrutinized more closely than their peers, and they have felt disrespected or undervalued because they are Black.
“What we know is that, because Black teachers are positioned, in particular Black men teachers, are positioned as enforcers first and teacher second, that they’re not always viewed by their white colleagues as having expertise as it relates to teaching and learning,” Bristol said.
Krystle Goff, a targeted student population coordinator at 122nd Street Elementary in Los Angeles, says Black teachers are under pressure to be perfect. They feel they have to continually prove themselves to administrators and other teachers. Black teachers aren’t given the same grace as their counterparts, she said.
“It feels like we’re coming up short. It feels like we’re not meeting the criteria, and so, we exit the field altogether,” said Goff, who is responsible for the redesignation of English learners at the school.
The heightened scrutiny and lack of support of Black teachers comes from colleagues of all races, including fellow Black teachers and administrators, Goff said.
“I think that because we work for a system that sort of perpetuates that cycle of power and just white supremacy, we don’t know how to support (one another), Goff said. … “You don’t even realize that how you’re interacting with each other is just not productive.”
Black teachers say they sometimes feel dismissed by people who question whether they are teachers while they are carrying out their duties.
“I’ve shown up to field trips where I was the teacher that had arranged the field trip, and I’ve got my backpack on,” Sims said. “I’ve got a badge on with keys. I have a T-shirt that matches the children’s T-shirt that says I belong to this school. And I’m like, ‘Hi, I’m Ms. Sims. I called. We’re here for our field trip.’ ‘Well, (they ask). ‘Are youthe teacher’?”
“We’re automatically, a lot of times, dismissed, or it’s assumed that we’re not the teacher,” said Preston Jackson, a physical education teacher at California Middle School in Sacramento. “(They assume) we’re the campus monitor, or we’re the custodian. So right off the bat, you’re having to fight that type of bias that is still out there because there aren’t that many Black teachers.”
Being a teacher is hard, but being a Black teacher is harder, Jackson said.
“Ninety percent you probably are going to be on a site where you’re the only one there,” Jackson said. “And so, you’re not going to have someone there that has gone through a similar process, because being a Black teacher is a completely different situation.”
Inadequate support, feelings of isolation
A recent survey of 128 former and current Black teachers by the Black Educator Advocates Network titled “What Schools must Do to Retain Black Educators,” found that these teachers face challenges in expressing their cultural identity, ranging from discomfort with colleagues’ comments, to a lack of support in addressing racism within their schools. Some teachers mentioned feeling isolated or encountering resistance when discussing anti-Blackness or organizing cultural events.
“Just as all students benefit from the experience of having classroom teachers from diverse backgrounds, school districts benefit from educators who bring their expansive experiences of many cultures to their school communities,” Chino Valley’s Walker told EdSource. “But, showing up as our true and authentic selves is not always understood and appreciated. School districts should make implicit bias training mandatory for all employees, not just once, but on an annual basis.”
Sims agrees that implicit bias training is important, but she remembers attending a training session that left her feeling uncomfortable and angry. She remembers a discussion about students who couldn’t afford to buy clothes that complied with the school’s dress code. One teacher at the training said: “These kids” can’t come to school prepared, but they come to school with brand-new Jordans, Sims said.
“Well, I know what that coded language means when you’re talking about children wearing Jordans,” Sims said. “I know you’re talking about Black children. Obviously, everybody wears Jordans. But that was the time that I got really heated. And I said to myself, ‘Brooke, walk out the room, get some air because part of you wants to correct that person.’ And I probably should have.”
Since that incident, Sims has become part of her union’s executive board and has taken training from the California Teachers Association on how to deal with racist comments and microaggression.
“I’m just learning to be OK to do that at 41 years old,” she said.
Cultural brokering often expected
Black teachers say they are often saddled with extra responsibilities, including serving as liaisons to Black families and disciplining Black students because of their race.
More than half of the respondents to the Black Educator Advocates Network survey said that because of their race, they are expected to educate others about racism and are expected to lead professional development sessions, teach classes on Black identity and address racism in various ways at their schools.
Collectively, the experiences of Black educators, coupled with being tasked with working with Black families disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, have left Black teachers exhausted, Alicia Simba, a transitional kindergarten teacher in Oakland Unified, told EdSource.
“It’s difficult when kids are carrying so much and parents are carrying so much, and wanting to be there to help them can be physically exhausting, as well as emotionally exhausting,” Simba said. “I think a lot of conversation around (teacher) burnout comes from that.”
Black teachers may feel they have to leave the profession to preserve their emotional well-being, even if they love the kids and the community and love to teach, Simba said, adding that teachers who work in schools with a large population of Black students also put in extra work because those schools are usually under-resourced.
“I’m working longer hours because we don’t have the cleaning staff that other schools might have, or a regular custodian like other schools might have,” Simba said. “So, I’m spending extra time having to clean up, or maybe I’m spending extra money on getting books for the kids because our budget isn’t as big as other schools or, with other schools, they might fundraise.”
This is the second part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.
Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.
The final story looks at what California and school districts are doing to recruit and retain Black teachers, and what still needs to be done.
California school districts have been trying to recruit and retain Black teachers for years, but the numbers don’t seem to be increasing. The cost of teacher preparation and unpaid student teaching make it difficult for Black teacher candidates to complete the work to earn a credential. Once in the classroom, a lack of support and respect sometimes makes it difficult for them to remain.
In the 2020-21 school year, the most recent year data is available, 3.8% of all teachers in California were Black, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Black students made up 5.2% of the state’s student population that year.
Research shows that having a Black teacher in the classroom has a positive impact on all students, especially students of color who, as a result, have higher test scores and graduation rates.
Krystle Goff: We constantly have to prove ourselves
Krystle Goff is a student program coordinator at 122nd Street Elementary in Los Angeles Unified.Krystle Goff
Krystle Goff worked as a special education paraeducator for four years before earning a teaching credential, and later a masters’ degree. Now, even with eight years as a credentialed teacher, she still feels she has to prove herself every day.
Black teachers aren’t given the same opportunities to make mistakes that other teachers are given, said Goff, who works in Los Angeles Unified. There is pressure every day to get it right the first time, even from other Black teachers, she said.
“There is a standard that Black educators hold toward each other,” she said. “We are harder on ourselves and harder on our students than I think is talked about.”
Goff alsospent 14 months at the Principal Leadership Institute at UCLA, which prepares educators to be social justice leaders in Los Angeles schools.
“(There was) lots of reading, lots of literature, and it just kind of pulled apart the systems that I now just can’t unsee,” Goff said. “It’s almost like I’m in the matrix. When I walk into school systems. I’m like, you guys need help.”
Goff is currently the targeted student population coordinator, responsible for the re-designation of English learners at 122nd Street Elementary Schoolin Los Angeles. She wants to be a school administrator.
“It’s important because that’s the only way we are going to shift schools,” she said. “… We need principals who are able to see the needs of the community and address them on the school campus, and not weaponize what’s happening in the community on the school campus.”
There is racial tension at 122nd Street Elementary that should be addressed, she said. The school is predominantly Latino, with Black students making up less than 20% of the population. The tension was apparent in February as teachers made decisions about whether to have Black history programs.
“It’s been very, what seems controversial,” Goff said. “… It’s very political.”
Schools should offer staff training on race and identity, or a staff retreat where colleagues can discuss the topic, Goff said.
“I think that in every layer of what makes a school run — from the parent center to the classroom, to the office — there’s this buzz about race and identity, but we don’t ever talk about it,” she said. “We don’t ever mention it. And somehow we’re supposed to all gel together and work together. I think it takes training to identify who we are and what we bring to our position to understand how we’re able to best work with one another.”
Preston Jackson: More Black mentors are needed
P.E. teacher Preston Jackson works at California Middle School at Sacramento Ct.
Being a teacher is hard, but being a Black teacher is harder, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento City Unified.
“Ninety percent, you probably are going to be on a site where you’re the only one there,” Jackson said. “And so you’re not going to have someone there that has gone through a similar process, because being a Black teacher is a completely different situation.”
Jackson is one of two Black teachers at the middle school. During his 19-year tenure, there have only been a few more, he said.
Having more Black mentors would have made his early years in teaching easier, Jackson said, because they would have provided guidance on difficult topics a new teacher may not feel comfortable discussing with administrators, like how to deal with parents of other races that talk down to them.
“They have to have someone they can have those types of tough conversations with, to kind of help them work through the process until they get to a point where they are confident enough on their own feet, where they can handle those things,” he said.
Jackson gets discouraged about teaching sometimes, particularly when it comes to the low expectations he feels some in education have for Black children. This is the No. 1 reason Black teachers quit, he said.
He was going over benchmark test scores with the principal and fellow members of the School Site Council in February, when he realized that no Black students were enrolled in Math 8, the highest level math course.
“So, you can tell me that, with all the Black kids we have on this campus, not one is qualified to be in Math 8?” Jackson asked.
Not even the high-achieving Black students in the school were enrolled in the class, and Jackson suspects they were not steered toward the class because teachers think it is too difficult for them.
“They’re expecting kids to fail,” he said. “They’re setting the kids up for failure instead of preparing them for success. And that’s a huge problem.”
Alicia Simba: I wanted to work with Black teachers
Alicia Simba is a transitional kindergarten teacher at Prescott Elementary School in Oakland Unified.
Alicia Simba chose to work in the Oakland Unified School District when she started as a teacher four years ago, so that she could be in a school community with other Black teachers. Her school, Prescott Elementary,also has a Black principal, and the district has a Black superintendent.
When she was looking for work, Simba went to Wikipedia and looked for cities in California with the largest populations of Black residents, and then looked up their school districts. Even those districts often didn’t have many Black teachers, she found.
“Unlike other friends and peers that I have, I’m never the only Black teacher in a professional development or at a conference in the district,” Simba said of Oakland Unified. “I think that, really, to me, helps with the retention part.”
Of her friends from her teacher preparation program, Simba, a transitional kindergarten teacher, says she works with the highest number of Black children and has the lowest salary.
“I can see how friendships might become more segregated as we get older,” Simba said. “In a couple of years, my friends and I will just not be living within the same means. They’ll want to go to Baja, and I can’t go — not because I don’t want to go to Baja. I do want to go to Baja. But because I teach in OUSD.”
Simba attended a women’s college on the East Coast as a science major and worked at the campus day care center before being accepted into the teacher preparation program at Stanford University on a full scholarship. It was the job at the day care center that made her decide to teach.
“I was like, one, this is the best job ever,” she said. “I love the kids. But two, I get to hang out with the best women in the world.”
Simba decided to take the traditional route to a credential instead of an alternative route, such as an internship, which pays teacher candidates to work as a classroom teacher while completing teacher preparation coursework. She wanted a more thorough education, she said.
While teacher interns are paid, they are more likely to leave teaching because they do not benefit from mentorship and are thrust into a classroom as the lead teacher without support or guidance, she said.
Traditional training can help teachers learn to deal with difficult situations that may lead to burnout, Simba said.
“Like when a kid throws a chair, or bites them,” she said. “Like when one peed on the floor, they actually know what to do. These are all things that happened to me.”
There are things that can be done to increase the number of Black teachers, including student loan forgiveness, paying student teachers, paying teachers more equitably across districts and offering subsidized housing, Simba said. Young teachers also need mentorship and emotional support, she added.
Black teachers may feel they have to leave (their jobs) to preserve their own emotional well-being, even if they love the kids and the community and love to teach, Simba said.
Brooke Sims: Cruel words impact Black students
Brooke Sims has always loved school. Her mother and grandmother were teachers, so she spent a lot of time in classrooms, even as a small child.
“I was joking about how much I loved school supplies, so maybe that’s why I’m a teacher — a love of school supplies,” she said. “I always played school.”
Sims had a chance to do it for real in high school when she helped out in preschool and kindergarten classrooms in Stockton as part of a career educational course called Careers with Children. It wasn’t long before Sims was certain that teaching was what she wanted to do with her life.
Having her family as role models helped Sims to visualize herself as a teacher, because she had few Black teachers during her K-12 years in Stockton. She didn’t see many Black teachers until she attended Delta College in Stockton and then later, when she began student teaching at Elk Grove Unified in Sacramento County.
Sims says that in the 16 years since she received her teaching credential, she has considered quitting many times. The work is harder; there is little support and the pay isn’t great.
She also has had to contend with colleagues who make racist and insensitive comments about people of color, including students.
“It breaks my heart because it’s like, you’re teaching Black children, you’re teaching children of color, and this is what you think, and you’ve never taken the time to reflect or maybe look at it differently.”
This sometimes plays out with Black children being punished harder than their white counterparts, even if their offenses are worse, Sims said.
“I’m not in all of these people’s classrooms, but I’ve heard the microaggressions, I’ve heard the way they speak, and I can’t imagine what happens in the classroom,” she said.
The incidents go back as far as her days as a student teacher. In one case, a white teacher candidate came back from a meeting with her consulting teacher livid. She told Sims that the consulting teacher told her not to work so hard with two students of color because “they are not going to go to college.” The candidate asked to be assigned another consulting teacher.
“She could not believe that this woman said this to her about some little kids, some little first graders,” Sims said.
Petrina Miller: Better pay would make teachers stay
Petrina Miller teaches at 116th Street School in Los Angeles.
A lot has changed since Petrina Miller began teaching at 116th Street School in Los Angeles about 26 years ago, including the demographics of the students. When she began teaching, the school had mostly Black students, and now the majority of students are Latino.
Although Miller appreciates the need for Black students to have Black teachers, she doesn’t think people should be assigned tasks, or students, solely because of their skin color. It’s not fair to the student, and it’s not fair to the teacher, she said, because sometimes, they might fare better with a younger teacher, for example.
Miller, who teaches a combined transitional kindergarten and kindergarten class at the school, is a member of Educators for Excellence, a nonprofit with the goal of elevating the teaching profession. It has more than 30,000 members.
Black teachers are being pushed out of the profession because of a lack of support, an ability to earn more at another job and a general lack of respect from the public and administrators, Miller said.
People don’t go into teaching for the high pay, Miller said. But teachers do deserve a wage that is livable or some sort of property tax adjustment or other financial help to make being a teacher more attractive.
“Then they can live where they work,” Miller said. “I know some teachers who work in San Pedro and live somewhere else. They can’t afford it, or they work in Torrance and … they can’t live there, it costs too much.”
Since the Covid pandemic, there has been less support and sometimes respect from administrators as they struggle to balance new rules and requirements from the district and state.
“I think that being 10, 15 years into this profession, you expect a certain amount of respect or professionalism from your higher-ups,” Miller said. “And I think that the trickle-down effect on all the things that happen from the district office to the (school) office, that respect is just getting lost.”
A middle school science teacher explains a lesson on climate change using a SMART board.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage. The state and individual school districts have launched initiatives to recruit teachers of color, but educators and advocates say more needs to be done.
Hiring a diverse group of teachers helps all students, but the impact is particularly significant for students of color, who then score higher on tests and are more likely to graduate from college, according to the Learning Policy Institute. A recently released report also found that Black boys are less likely to be identified for special education when they have a Black teacher.
This is the third part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.
Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.
In the last five years, state lawmakers have made earning a credential easier and more affordable, and have offered incentives for school staff to become teachers — all moves meant to ease the teacher shortage and help to diversify the educator workforce.
Despite efforts by the state and school districts, the number of Black teachers doesn’t seem to be increasing. Black teachers say that to keep them in the classroom, teacher preparation must be more affordable, pay and benefits increased, and more done to ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.
“Black educators specifically said that they felt like they were being pushed out of the state of California,” said Jalisa Evans, chief executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network of a recent survey of Black teachers. “When we look at the future of Black educators for the state, it can go either way, because what Black educators are feeling right now is that they’re not welcome.”
Task force offers recommendations
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called diversifying the teacher workforce a priority and established the California Department of Education Educator Diversity Advisory Group in 2021.
The advisory group has made several recommendations, including beginning a public relations campaign and offering sustained funding to recruit and retain teachers of color, and providing guidance and accountability to school districts on the matter. The group also wants universities, community groups and school districts to enter into partnerships to build pathways for teachers of color.
Since then, California has created a set of public service announcements and a video to help recruit teachers and has invested $10 million to help people of color to become school administrators, said Travis Bristol, chairman of the advisory group and an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley. Staff from county offices of education also have been meeting to share ideas on how they can support districts’ efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, he said.
The state also has invested more than $350 million over the past six years to fund teacher residency programs, and recently passed legislation to ensure residents are paid a minimum salary. Residents work alongside an experienced teacher-mentor for a year of clinical training while completing coursework in a university preparation program — a time commitment that often precludes them from taking a job.
Legislators have also proposed a bill that would require that student teachers be paid. Completing the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required by the state, while paying for tuition, books, supplies and living expenses, is a challenge for many Black teacher candidates.
Black teacher candidates typically take on much more student debt than their white counterparts, in part, because of the large racial wealth gap in the United States. A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth (property and cash), while the median Latino family had $38,000 and the median Black family had $23,000.
Lack of data makes it difficult to know what is working
It’s difficult to know if state efforts are working. California hasn’t released any data on teacher demographics since the 2018-19 school year, although the data is submitted annually by school districts. The California Department of Education (CDE) did not provide updated data or interviews requested by EdSource for this story.
The most recent data from CDE shows the number of Black teachers in California declined from 4.2% in 2009 to 3.9% during the 2018-19 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics data from the 2020-21 show that Black teachers made up 3.8% of the state educator workforce.
Having current data is a critical first step to understanding the problem and addressing it, said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West, an education research and advocacy organization.
“Let’s be clear: The California Department of Education needs to annually publish educator demographic and experience data,” Lara said. “It has failed to do so for the past four years. … Without this data, families, communities and decision-makers really are in the dark when it comes to the diversity of the educator workforce.”
LA Unified losing Black teachers despite efforts
While most state programs focus on recruiting and retaining all teachers of color, some California school districts have initiatives focused solely on recruiting Black teachers.
The state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, passed the Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity, Preparation and Retention resolution two years ago. It required district staff to develop a strategic plan to ensure schools have Black teachers, administrators and mental health workers, and to advocate for programs that offer pathways for Black people to become teachers.
When the resolution was passed, in February 2022, Los Angeles Unified had 1,889 Black teachers — 9% of its teacher workforce. The following school year, that number declined to 1,823 or 7.9% of district teachers. The number of Black teachers in the district has gone down each year since 2016. The district did not provide data for the current school year.
Robert Whitman, director of the Educational Transformation Office at LA Unified, attributed the decrease, in part, to the difficulty attracting teachers to the district, primarily because of the area’s high cost of living.
“Those who are coming out of colleges now, in some cases, we find that they can make more money doing other things,” Whitman said. “And so, they may not necessarily see education as the most viable option.”
The underrepresentation of people of color prompted the district to create its own in-house credentialing program, approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Whitman said. The program allows classified staff, such as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants and bus drivers, to become credentialed teachers while earning a salary and benefits at their original jobs.
Grow-your-own programs such as this, and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program, and a soon-to-be launched apprenticeship program, are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.
Los Angeles Unified has other initiatives to increase the number of Black educators in the district, Whitman said, including working with universities and colleges to bring Black teachers, counselors and psychiatric social workers to their campuses. The district also has programs that help school workers earn a credential for free, and channels employees completing a bachelor’s degree toward the district’s teacher preparation program where they can begin teaching while earning their credential.
All new teachers at Los Angeles Unified are supported by mentors and affinity groups, which have been well received by Black teachers, who credit them with inspiring and helping them to see themselves as leaders in the district, Whitman said.
Oakland has more Black teachers than students
Recruiting and retaining Black teachers is an important part of the Oakland Unified three-year strategic plan, said Sarah Glasband, director of recruitment and retention for the district. To achieve its goals, the district has launched several partnerships that make an apprenticeship program, and a residency program that includes a housing subsidy, possible. A partnership with the Black Teacher Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, offers affinity groups, workshops and seminars to support the district’s Black teachers.
The district also has a Classified School Employee Program funded by the state and a new high school program to train future teachers. District pathway programs have an average attrition rate of less than 10%, Glasband said.
This year, 21.3% of the district’s K-12 teachers are Black, compared with 20.3% of their student population, according to district data. Oakland Unified had a retention rate of about 85% for Black teachers between 2019 and 2023.
Better pay, a path to leadership will help teachers stay
Black teachers interviewed by EdSource and researchers say that to keep them in the classroom, more needs to be done to make teacher preparation affordable, improve pay and benefits, and ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.
The Black Educator Advocates Network came up with five recommendations after surveying 128 former and current Black teachers in California about what it would take to keep them in the classroom:
Hire more Black educators and staff
Build an anti-racist, culturally responsive and inclusive school environment
Create safe spaces for Black educators and students to come together
Provide and require culturally responsive training for all staff
Recognize, provide leadership opportunities and include Black educators in decision making
Teachers interviewed by EdSource said paying teachers more also would make it easier for them to stay.
“I don’t want to say that it’s the pay that’s going to get more Black teachers,” Brooke Sims, a Stockton teacher, told EdSource. “But you get better pay, you get better health care.”
The average teacher salary in the state is $88,508, with the average starting pay at $51,600, according to the 2023 National Education Association report, “State of Educator Pay in America.” California’s minimum living wage was $54,070 last year, according to the report.
State efforts, such as an initiative that pays teachers $5,000 annually for five years after they earn National Board Certification, will help with pay parity across school districts, Bristol said. Teachers prove through assessments and a portfolio that they meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To be eligible for the grant, teachers must work at least half of their time in a high-needs school. Teachers who qualify are also given $2,500 to cover the cost of certification.
This incentive will help teachers continue their education and improve their practice, said Los Angeles teacher Petrina Miller. “It’s awesome,” she said.
Teacher candidates must be actively recruited
Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.
“In order to increase the number of Black teachers in schools, it has to become deliberate,” Jackson said. “You have to actively recruit and actively seek them out to bring them into the profession.”
Since starting in 2005, Jackson has been one of only a handful of Black teachers at his school.
“And for almost every single one of my kids, I’m the first Black teacher they’ve ever had,” said Jackson. “… And for some of them, I’m the first one they’ve ever seen.”
Mentors are needed to help retain new teachers
Mentor teachers are the key ingredient to helping new Black educators transition successfully into teaching, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource. Alicia Simba says she could have taken a job for $25,000 more annually in a Bay Area district with few Black teachers or students, but opted to take a lower salary to work in Oakland Unified.
But like many young teachers, Simba knew she wanted mentors to help her navigate her first years in the classroom. She works alongside Black teachers in Oakland Unified who have more than 20 years of teaching experience. One of her mentor teachers shared her experience of teaching on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Other teachers told her about teaching in the 1980s during the crack cocaine epidemic.
“It really helps dispel some of the sort of narratives that I hear, which is that being a teacher is completely unsustainable,” Simba said. “Like, there’s no way that anyone could ever be a teacher long term, which are things that, you know, I’ve heard my friends say, and I’ve thought it myself.”
The most obvious way to retain Black teachers would be to make sure they are treated the same as non-Black teachers, said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher and president of the Associated Chino Teachers.
“If you are a district administrator, site administrator, site or colleague, parent or student, my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and my special education credential are just as valuable and carry as much weight, and are as respected as any other educator,” she said.
“However, it’s just as critical for all those groups to acknowledge and respect the unique cultural experience I bring to the table and acknowledge and respect that I’m a proud product of my ancestral history.”
MarQuan Thornton is a senior at Adelanto High in California’s High Desert. He credits the Heritage Program at his school, aimed at Black students, for helping to keep him on track for attending college.
Emma Gallegos/EdSource
Across the nation, more Black students are graduating from high school — but fewer are attending college, according to a report released by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
A study released Tuesday by the organization examined 15 districts throughout the country that collectively educate more than 250,000 Black male students, two of which are in California: the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest school district in the state, where 7% of students are Black, and the Oakland Unified School District, which has an enrollment of about 45,000, 21% of students being Black.
With a 71% graduation rate, Black males at Oakland Unified were among the five lowest in the country — hovering above Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Minneapolis. At 75%, Los Angeles Unified’s wasn’t much higher.
“It’s clear that there is something that has to happen across California,” said John Jackson, the CEO and president of the Schott Foundation.
“If you take L.A. Unified and Oakland Unified as two of the largest districts in the state — and two districts that have the largest Black male population — there is something that has to happen.”
Jackson added that any efforts by LAUSD are especially critical and could “potentially catalyze progress across the country.”
Graduating from high school
As of the 2019-20 academic year, roughly 86% of students across the country graduated from high school in four years, according to the report.
And between 2012 and 2020, Black students’ graduation rates improved the most of any group — slicing the gap between Black and white students by almost half. Black male students, however, did not perform as well as their female peers.
“The fact that between 2012-2020, the graduation rate increased for all students (4%) and more significantly for Black students (14%) supports the need for states and localities to focus on resourcing the strategies and supports that improve the academic outcomes for the lowest performing group as a pathway to elevate the outcomes for all students,” the report noted.
Still, at 81%, the rate for all Black students remains below the national average — along with Latino and Native American students.
Only three states had graduation rates that were higher than the national average: Alabama (88%), Delaware (87%) and Florida (87%). On the other hand, Wyoming (66%), Minnesota (69%) and Idaho (69%) had the lowest rates.
In California, Black students sustained a graduation rate of 76.9%.
Graduating from high school, according to the report, is also connected to a lower likelihood of becoming homeless or incarcerated.
Specifically, the report notes that a young person who has not graduated from high school is 350% more likely to experience homelessness and 63% more likely to face incarceration.
High school graduation can also be linked with a longer life expectancy.
“To change this trajectory impacting the very lives of Black males, we must broaden our lens beyond the classrooms and hallways because students do not live within school walls,” Andre Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in the report.
“They reside with families and are part of neighborhoods where the prevailing conditions directly impact not only their educational outcomes but also their life expectancy.”
Going to college
Nationally, in the past decade, more than 600,000 Black male students who were projected to participate in post-secondary education have been missing, according to the report.
Community college enrollment among Black students across the board fell by 26%, and Black student enrollment in historically Black colleges and universities fell by 16%. Meanwhile, in four-year colleges and universities, there was no increase.
And among Black men, college enrollment dropped by 39% between 2011 and 2020.
The fall in enrollment comes amid an increase in the number of Black people between the ages of 18 to 34 — whose population rose from 9 million in 2000 to almost 11.5 million a decade later.
CSU’s Young Males of Color Consortium received $3.2 million dedicated to creating programs that will be available at 16 CSU campuses and nearby community colleges — and has been “laser-focused on collaborating with higher education professionals to improve the retention, success, and college completion of young men of color enrolled at our partner colleges and universities,” according to a statement provided to EdSource.
“In the future, we hope to work with our K-12 partners to strengthen the college access pipeline for young men of color, including Black men,” the consortium added.
‘Loving systems’
The report emphasized the need to cultivate “loving systems” — which it defines as “a system of core supports that you would provide the children you love” — in order to foster equity and improve student outcomes.
“When we talk about loving systems, we talk about giving young people and, in this particular case, Black males, access to the supports that are indicative of what you know the average parent would give their young person to succeed,” Jackson said.
“Access to healthy food is an education issue. Access to affordable housing is an education issue.”
In LAUSD, the Black poverty rate was 20% in 2022, and the Black unemployment rate remained at 14%. Meanwhile, in Oakland, the poverty rate was similar to LAUSD — and the Black unemployment rate was about 10%.
Both regions also deal with high costs of living and are highly segregated. According to the study, LAUSD had a Residential Segregation Dissimilarity Index of 60%, and Oakland’s was 52%. The index measures the distribution of Black and white residents, ranging from complete integration at zero, to complete segregation at 100.
“At the end of the day, racism is nothing more than institutionalized lovelessness. And with that frame, our goal here has to be — and as we recommend the North Star for California, for LA for Oakland, and many other cities — creating … the types of loving communities where all students have an opportunity to learn and to thrive,” Jackson said.
“When we do that, we will also see the type of progress in a multiracial democracy that we desire.”
Younger Black and Latino teachers are some of the most passionate educators in the Los Angeles Unified School District — and they are also at the highest risk of leaving the profession, according to a new report.
The survey, which involved interviews conducted in early 2024, found that roughly one-third of Gen Z Black and Latino teachers expect to leave their careers in education. Seventy-one percent of those teachers said they expected to do so within two years, either to find a higher paying job or seek a position with a better work-life balance.
“I thought I would be a teacher forever,” said a Latina high school teacher quoted in the survey report. “I feel very confused and sad that I have to consider leaving something that I’m very passionate about and very good at, and I work so hard at.”
LAUSD has made several efforts to boost both pipelines into teaching professions for current students of color and to help teachers already in the district stay where they are, according to Jacob Guthrie, the district’s director of recruitment, selection and retention.
“Having a representative workforce means better outcomes for students,” he said in an interview with EdSource. “And the district is committed to providing pathways and support for our Gen Z educators of color so that they can feel supported and they remain with us as district employees.”
The survey and report were conducted and written primarily by GPSN, a local nonprofit that seeks to help improve public education in Los Angeles, with a focus on students of color and students living in poverty.
The work involved a series of focus group discussions conducted in November 2023, and individual surveys with 400 district educators in early 2024. The teachers surveyed were split into two, 200-person groups: Gen Z Black and Latino teachers and a general educator population, which included teachers of all backgrounds. Their responses to a series of questions were analyzed side by side.
According to the study, providing affordable health care options and improving work-life balance would make the biggest difference in LAUSD keeping its younger Black and Latino teachers.
And advocates say doing so is critical as concerns grow about retention and diversity among the future teacher workforce in Los Angeles Unified.
“If we don’t get really serious about the things that they’re raising … in this report, then we have a gap that we are widening, and we might lose some of some really high-quality teachers in the pipeline,” said Jalisa Evans, the founder and CEO of the Black Educator Advocates Network.
Why are younger Black and Latino teachers less likely to stay in LAUSD?
A quarter of the report’s Black and Latino respondents who are Gen Z, defined as under the age of 30, said they would leave education in pursuit of a higher-paying job. Meanwhile, 27% said they wanted more work-life balance.
Burnout was also of concern for nearly a third of Gen Z Black and Latino teachers, the report found — and Evans said “for folks to be newer into the field and already experiencing burnout is a huge sign that there’s not sustainability.”
“Burnout specifically has been normalized. And so, for more veteran teachers, it is normal for them to take work home. … It is normal to think that you’re actually supposed to lesson plan at home,” Evans said. “And so, I think newer educators, specifically Gen Z, Black and Latino teachers, they’re experiencing this burnout, and it wasn’t their interpretation of what they were getting into.”
In addition to a desire for work-life balance, high costs of housing and living play a key role in younger Black and Latino educators’ desire to leave the district, particularly if they live in an area that is rapidly gentrifying and further from the communities they teach in.
Gina Gray, an English teacher, said the topic of affordability comes up frequently among her fellow teachers — with some who are younger having to live with several families under the same roof to sustain themselves financially.
“With this much education, with this much skill and knowledge, if you go into another field, you will make more money, but we’ve accepted this wage penalty for educators,” Gray said.
“And so to be new and starting out and wanting affordable housing and realizing that the career I’ve chosen has made that where it seems impossible? Do I stay in the career, or do I kind of validate things for myself?”
Does gender have an impact?
While the report did not specifically focus on gender, Ana Teresa Dahan, GPSN’s managing director who helped author the report, noted that gender is tied to retention.
She emphasized that a lot of younger women leave teaching because they no longer feel the job is conducive to having a family; and, because education is still largely female dominated, Dahan said that exodus has a larger impact on the younger workforce as a whole.
“We heard in our focus groups, teachers (saying): “I can’t drop off my kid at school before 7:45, but I have to be at my school by 7:30,’ ” Dahan said. “There’s logistical challenges to being a teacher and then also raising children that I think are being voiced more than previous generations.”
Many have also stressed the need for more male teachers of color in the district.
What positive feedback did Los Angeles Unified receive?
Many have applauded LAUSD for its “grow your own” model of hiring former district students.
Specifically, one-fifth of the teachers surveyed in the GPSN report had formerly attended LAUSD and said they wanted to give back.
“They go off, they go to college … and they see education as a way to transform their community,” Dahan said. “And that’s why they’re becoming teachers, because they want kids in their communities to have the opportunities they did. That, we thought, was really compelling.”
Forty-four percent of Gen Z Black and Latino educators said they wanted to share their love of learning, while 40% wanted to pursue teaching because they were passionate about a subject area.
According to the report, more than 85% of district educators also said they feel their individual identity is reflected in their fellow staff and student populations. Most also noted the district had been supportive and helped them grow professionally.
What are the current supports for younger Black and Latino educators?
Guthrie said LAUSD provides a number of opportunities to support retention and career development, including creating pathways for high school graduates to get a teaching credential and programs that support teachers in getting administrative services credentials at no cost.
This year, the district has also unveiled a program to help increase pathways into careers in education for students at Black Student Achievement Plan campuses.
And for teachers already in the district, Guthrie said LAUSD has been providing special training to administrators on supporting educators of color — and so have career ladder specialists, who can mentor teachers wanting to move up.
He also mentioned that the district formed affinity groups for both Black male and female teachers, which will meet six times this year.
Why is addressing retention important now?
Parents, students and teachers have all stressed the importance of having a body of teachers that reflect their student populations.
Maira Nieto has four children attending LAUSD schools — spanning from fourth through 10th grades. She said having Latino teachers who can be culturally understanding is critical, for both students and for parents who want to be more involved with their children’s education.
“They are young children; they have to feel at home, like they are welcomed,” Nieto said in Spanish. “If a teacher doesn’t provide them with that, the child, I think, loses interest at an academic level.”
Many have also emphasized that younger teachers of color are critical, as they represent the future of Los Angeles’ educator workforce.
“That’s a little frightening,” Gray said, “to think that some students will go through the whole system and possibly not have … a teacher they can identify with.”
What other kinds of workplace support would help?
Providing affordable health care options and improving work-life balance would make the biggest difference in keeping Gen Z Black and Latino educators in LAUSD, according to the report. Other respondents called for receiving incentive bonuses earlier and having improved family leave.
Many teachers in the survey also said they wanted more professional development focused on social-emotional learning strategies, and more than half reported dealing with behavioral issues in the classroom — a burden sometimes disproportionately placed on teachers of color, Evans said.
“Are they being overly used in a way that is just based off of their identity? Are they having to carry the burden of being the school’s disciplinarian?” Evans said.
“And if so, LAUSD should definitely look at their school leadership to think about how they can support all staff members to be able to build relationships with their students and to be competent in this idea of classroom management.”
While LAUSD does provide Black educator networks for both men and women, Gray said affinity spaces provided by the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, have really made all the difference.
Meanwhile, Guthrie said he is “not aware” of similar networks for Latino teachers.
“The districts, the school sites, they need to be intentional about retaining teachers of color … making sure that sometimes how our students feel othered, that we don’t feel othered on these same campuses,” Gray said.
“Be intentional with it. Be focused on it. Understand that we need support in order to sustain the career, and we want to stay.”
National University President Mark D. Milliron, right,,congratulates a graduating student at the university’s 2023 commencement.
Courtesy: National University
In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision to end race-conscious college admissions, the predicted impact has become a troubling reality. Many selective universities are reporting significant decreases in Black student enrollment this fall. This latest development continues a broader trend of declining Black postsecondary enrollment, which since 2010 has fallen at all U.S. colleges by nearly 30%.
These dire enrollment reports are emerging now as a growing number of states are eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs and services — and just four years after a nationwide reckoning on racial injustice. Whether colleges have become even more exclusive or if Black students are turning away from higher education, the results are the same: Our nation’s colleges and universities are becoming less diverse — and yet another barrier has been erected on the road toward increasing the number of Americans able to go to and graduate from college.
Despite bleak national trend lines, the state of California has just enacted a creative policy solution that will shine a spotlight on institutions that excel in educating and serving Black students. Senate Bill 1348, also known as the “Designation of California Black-Serving Institutions Act,” creates a state-level designation (BSI) to recognize the state’s public and independent colleges and universities where at least 10% or 1,500 students are Black.
The BSI designation is not just about enrollment numbers. It requires institutions to commit to providing essential services and resources to foster Black students’ academic success and meet their basic needs. For this reason, this proposal is a sound and logical policy prescription for California, which has the country’s fifth-largest population of Black people. It’s also a legislative innovation that other state and national policymakers should consider as American higher education is struggling to close completion and equity gaps and college demographics continue to grow more diverse.
The BSI concept draws inspiration from the success of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) — postsecondary institutions established before 1965 with the principal mission of educating African or Black Americans. Today, the nation’s 107 HBCUs have an impressive track record. They have graduated 40% of the nation’s Black engineers, 50% of America’s black lawyers and 80% of Black judges. Perhaps more than any other institution in this country, HBCUs have helped create economic and social mobility for millions of Black Americans.
However, most HBCUs are at least 75 years old — the majority were established in the 19th century — and are rarely found outside the South. For newer colleges and universities outside the South that serve diverse populations, a BSI designation would strengthen institutions and communities in multiple ways. It would offer a state seal of approval to institutions that are committed to serving Black students and willing to hold themselves accountable for the results. It also would help policymakers identify colleges and universities to receive targeted financial support and other resources.
This shift is particularly relevant given the changing demographics of today’s college students. Nontraditional, working and military students are fast becoming the norm. A third of today’s undergraduates are 25 or older. A quarter of them are raising children. About 40% of full-time students — and three-quarters of part-time students — are working while they’re in school. Because so many students are older, working full-time or raising families, it’s essential that institutions adapt to this new reality by offering flexible schedules, stackable credentials and comprehensive support services.
The BSI designation could be a valuable tool for states beyond California. In states with substantial Black populations but few or no HBCUs (California has just one HBCU, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science), it could help increase college access, improve completion rates and build a more skilled and educated workforce to fuel economic growth.
California’s proposal to recognize Black-serving institutions is a necessary — and long overdue — step toward acknowledging their critical role in reversing the decline in Black student enrollment and increasing access to higher education for historically underserved communities. Just as HBCUs have broadened access to education, California’s Black-serving institutions bill will reward colleges and universities statewide that are doing the vital work of serving the underserved students our economy and society need.
By investing in institutions committed to supporting Black students and other underserved groups, states can help foster stronger, more inclusive colleges and universities. Ensuring that more Black learners are on track to access and complete higher education will help California and other states produce the talented and inclusive workforce they need to compete in today’s fast-changing economy.
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Mark D. Milliron, Ph.D,is president, National University, a nonprofit private university based in San Diego with campuses across California as well as online. Thomas Stewart, Ph.D, is executive vice president and co-chair of the Social Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Council, National University.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
It’s not every day that California State University students get a specific greeting from a U.S. president. But this year at CSU Sacramento, former President Barack Obama sent a message to the students of the new Black Honors College.
“As members of the inaugural class of this college, you have a special responsibility to lead by example,” Obama said in the video message, where he encouraged the first cohort of the country’s first Black Honors College to “make life better for folks no matter what they look like, or where they come from.”
Launched in August, Sac State’s new Black Honors College, which is uniquely and specifically designed for all students interested in Black history, life, and culture —and it has ambitions of becoming one of the nation’s most respected historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
As the college aims to create a community of productivity and excellence, students in the Black Honors College are required to attend weekly study hours and have active participation in 80% of college events and programs. Among these programs are seminars on economic empowerment, self-determination and courageous leadership.
Academically, all general education courses will be taken within the college, and every major offered at Sac State is represented in the Black Honors College.
According to Sac State President Luke Wood, who founded the Black Honors College, his inspiration stemmed from the fact that while Sac State has the largest population of Black students in the CSU system, the campus’ graduation rate for Black students is only 17.4%, below the 23.4% average across Cal State campuses.
“No one serves more Black students than we do, and we’re in the bottom third in terms of success rates,” Wood said. “I don’t believe that it’s a function of students, their families and their communities, but of institutions and educators who have not been adequately prepared and designed to serve them. And so the whole goal was to create an institution within an institution that’s specifically designed to serve students who are interested in Black history, life and culture.”
Wood explained that the college is doing this by using research-focused initiatives with past success rates, such as structuring the student body as a “cohort” of individuals connected by a “shared learning experience.”
According to Wood, this shared learning experience includes faculty members with a demonstrated record of success in teaching and serving Black students, adequate resources and space — including a 6,000-square-foot space on campus made up of lecture rooms, office spaces and a study center — to properly serve these students’ needs, and a curriculum that’s “reflective of their lives and experiences.”
“This is why everyone in the honors college has a (general education) pathway where they’re taking classes only in the honors college with those faculty members,” Wood said.
Transfer students, who won’t have those same foundational courses, are required to take a specialized minor oriented in fields like real estate and development or health services — all in order to ensure upward socioeconomic mobility.
According to Wood, another “critical” aspect of this is that their curriculum will be “Afro-centric.” Regardless of students’ majors, the first two years in the college require students to take classes with a specialized focus on Black life, culture and community. This enrichment is supplemented by the “entire ecosystem” of faculty, counselors, academic advisers, staff directors and outreach coordinators, via their “commitment to serving the Black community.”
Wood noted that the college’s recent commemorative recognition by the Legislative Assembly emphasizes this commitment by acknowledging that it is a “Black-serving institution.”
“Sac State has always had a very strong community of Black faculty and staff who have essentially created an informal ‘underground railroad’ through the institution,” Wood said. “Part of what the Black Honors College did was (take) that railroad, and instead of it being underground, it became public.”
One of the handpicked Sac State professors who is teaching at the Black Honors College this fall is Ayanna Yonemura, a professor of ethnic and African American studies. She plans to use the concentrated environment of vested interest and smaller class sizes to her advantage.
“Every single week, we are immersed in so much wealth and positivity of Blackness,” Yonemura said. “With every single reading, video, lecture, discussion, podcast, students will learn about the diversity and resilience of Black people, and that is so powerful because … it’s contrary to the dominant messages, images and narratives that have become hegemonic and dominant in our society.”
As she teaches introduction to Pan-African studies this fall — one of the general education requirements for the college — Yonemura will also be helping to develop a curriculum unique to the Black Honors College, as it is currently borrowing relevant courses from other departments across campus.
“For me, I have a long background of implementing the curriculum around Black history and culture,” Yonemura said. “But what I think is really exciting is how faculty members from disciplines like STEM, which don’t usually center underrepresented groups, are going to be able to develop a curriculum that really centers Black life, history and culture.”
One of these STEM professors selected for the Black Honors College is James Reede, a part-time professor of environmental science who has had a long history of involvement in policy work for African American students as the Northern California chairman for the United Negro College Fund.
“I’m starting my 22nd year teaching environmental sciences, and I’ve never had more than four or five Black students in my class,” Reede said. “I expect there’s going to be more students that look like me in my classes now that will learn about what we’re doing to our Mother Earth, and be willing to do something about it.”
Continued Reede, “I want to encourage and inspire them to take a stand by also focusing on environmental injustices to the POC community, like how they suffer the ill effects of pollution sources by their homes.”
In the week before the start of the fall semester, the college hosted various community events to welcome students and professors to their first semester at the Black Honors College, according to Wood. These events featured a three-day orientation including guest speakers and community-building for the incoming students, and a pop-up event called “Black on Campus: Pop Up,” with live music and networking with fellow students, staff, faculty and alumni.
“The most beautiful thing that I’ve heard from students, and I’ve heard it at least 20 times over the past few days, is ‘I got accepted by six HBCU’s’ and I chose to come to Sacramento State because of what’s happening here,” Wood said. “I even had a student who was a transfer from Howard University because they wanted to be here. … We’re becoming a first-choice institution, the ‘HBCU of the West’, or I like to say ‘the North Star of the West.’”
According to Wood, this “skyrocketing” spirit of the Black campus community is evident in how applications from Black freshmen are up 20% this year, while Black transfer student rates are up 43%. He expects enrollment numbers to increase by the spring.
Additionally, Wood noted that fundraising efforts are just getting started. The college received a quarter-million dollar grant from the CSU system as an “institutional investment,” as well as various donations from private corporations and donors.
Wood said that the only growing pain the college has experienced thus far has been the significant number of students it’s had to turn away due to the need for equitable resource distribution. While the original goal was to grow the college to 500 students, the administration has now changed that goal to about 1,000-2,000 students to meet the tidal wave of applications.
“That has implications for the number of faculty, the space that we’re allocated, the fundraising that we’re going to need to do for scholarships,” Wood said. “But we’re committed. It’s uphill, we’re building a plane (while) flying it, but we’re building it with great people.”
Wood also noted that other institutions have reached out to Sac State to build their own “Sacramento State-certified Black Honors College” by utilizing the same academic model as the original.
“My hope is that 10 years from now, you’ll see 30 Black Honors Colleges spread throughout the West and Midwest, so that there’s safe havens for students who identify as Black throughout those spaces,” Wood said. “It allows them to have an experience that provides them with hope and dignity.”
Emily Hamill is a third-year student at UC Berkeley double-majoring in comparative literature and media studies and minoring in journalism.
During a recent work trip to another state, I ran into an acquaintance I’d met a few times at education conferences. After our initial chit-chat about jet lag, they brought up a sentiment I’ve increasingly heard lately: Surely I must be glad to do education work in California, where equity isn’t a bad word; where diversity is championed, and state leaders are quick to defend the programs, practices and policies that support students of color.
It’s becoming harder to fix my face when I hear these words. Rhetoric is one thing, actions and data are another. And in a state where the current trajectory won’t have all Black students at grade level in math until at least 2089, I worry that our focus on saying the right words is taking the place of doing the right thing.
Before I get written off as too angry, let me be clear that there are absolutely things to celebrate in California’s approach to education. But here is where the conundrum lies for me. Why is it that California pursues so many positive steps forward in education, but continually sidesteps significant action that would lead to tangible results for Black students?
EdTrust—West’s report “Black Minds Matter 2025: Building Bright Black Futures,” comes a decade after we originally issued a call to action for California leaders by launching the Black Minds Matter campaign in 2015. We found a big disconnect between the dreams and aspirations of Black students and the opportunities our education systems give them to succeed. Black students are more likely to attend schools with novice teachers. Black students have the lowest high school graduation rate in California. Fewer Black students are going to college after high school than 10 years ago, and Black students are still underrepresented at California State University and the University of California. On nearly every indicator we analyzed, the education systems charged with caring for our students fail to support Black students. Wouldn’t you be angry if these were your kids or family members?
Our reports, policy work, and that of other researchers and advocacy organizations show how many efforts proclaimed as supportive to Black students are performative and piecemeal, or watered down or abandoned altogether, like the changes made to the Black Student Achievement Program in Los Angeles and the quashing of 2023’s Assembly Bill 2774.
This work, and some of our previous statements about the pace of progress in the state, have pissed people off. It confounds me that some folks in power are more upset about the ways we describe the data on how schools and colleges are doing for Black students than they are about how schools and colleges are doing for Black students. We have to remember that there are real people behind these data points.
Some folks told us not to share this data and advocate strongly for Black students right now. The political climate is too tenuous to speak up for Black students, they said. We need to fly under the radar rather than speak loudly and boldly, they said. It is not lost on me that the individuals suggesting this quieter path are well-intentioned. However, as professor Shaun Harper points out, now is precisely the time for organizations and educational institutions “to showcase DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) activities to confirm that they are not the racist, divisive, discriminatory and anti-American activities that obstructionists erroneously claim”.
California may be in the crosshairs, but we are also at a crossroads.
The dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education is being framed as returning education to the states. So, let’s take them up on that in ways that not only reaffirm our values verbally, but also through new, bolder actions.
Many of our recommendations are not new, except one: We need a California Commission on Black Education Transformation. Our current education infrastructure is failing far too many Black students. As we outline in our report and will continue to share in upcoming materials, we are not proposing that this commission act as another task force, but rather that it serves as an entity with power and authority around resources and accountability measures. We need an overhaul, and now —when states are being told they are empowered to lead on education — is the time to do it.
What I reminded the colleague I saw at the recent conference is this: The fight for racial justice has always been an uphill battle, even in California. Yet what we have in California — or at least what I am hoping we have — are leaders who will not only not back down, but will embrace the call to be bold.
I’ve advised college students and been an adjunct professor. I would never tell a student to temper their expectations for themselves. I would never say to a student not to fight for what is right because it is hard. I hope California doesn’t, either.
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Christopher J. Nellum, Ph.D., is executive director of EdTrust—West, a nonprofit organization advancing policies and practices to dismantle the racial and economic barriers embedded in the California education system.
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