A teacher provides one-on-one instruction to a young elementary school student. California’s latest School Dashboard shows Black students are making progress, but not nearly fast enough for education leaders.
Courtesy photo
By Joe W. Bowers Jr.
Contributing Writer
SACRAMENTO — California’s latest School Dashboard makes one thing clear: Black students are making progress, but not nearly fast enough — and the public education system is still not organized to deliver the excellence they deserve.
The Dashboard, a color-coded statewide public school accountability tool, rates schools and districts on English language arts, math, chronic absenteeism, suspension, graduation and college-career readiness. Five colors — blue, green, yellow, orange and red — show, from high to low, how well students are performing and how much progress they are making. This year, African American students continue to score lowest among major racial groups across most academic indicators.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond says the results reveal both momentum and a mandate for urgency.
“Our students are gifted; the system must rise to meet their potential,” he said.
Thurmond points to statewide gains: Black students posted a 2.4% increase in English language arts proficiency, 2.3% in math, and 2.1% in science, alongside increases of 3.5% in graduation rates and 3.1% on the College and Career Indicator.
Those improvements, he said, “are showing results” from state investments in literacy coaches, tutoring, teacher residencies, community schools and mental health supports.
But progress, Thurmond stressed, “Is not enough. We have more work to do.”
California Black Media sought out leading Black educators across the state — including Margaret Fortune, founder of Fortune School; Ramona Bishop, former Vallejo Unified superintendent and co-founder of Elite Public Schools; Compton Unified School District Superintendent Darin Brawley and the California School Boards Association Communications chief Troy Flint, — to ask the central question: Why are Black students underperforming, and what will it take to close the gap?
What emerged is a set of insights shaped by each leader’s role — and ultimately reinforcing one another.
Fortune, whose charter schools serve a majority Black student body and outperform county and state averages, says the issue isn’t student ability — it’s whether schools are designed to help students succeed.
“Black kids are very, very smart,” she said.
For Fortune, the question is whether schools are designed to produce strong outcomes: high-quality teaching, tight assessment cycles, re-teaching when needed, and classrooms where students can learn without disruption. Her schools’ results, she argues, show what’s possible when instruction is rigorous and expectations are high. But she says the state still hasn’t invested at the level necessary to change outcomes statewide.
“Groups that make progress have money and policy. Blacks don’t have that,” she said.
Bishop described the problem in sharper terms.
“There’s no accountability… for any students in these systems,” she said. Districts can remain in the red or orange year after year.
“I’ve never seen a superintendent lose their job because Black students aren’t performing,” she said.
In Bishop’s classrooms, she emphasizes structure, coaching for teachers, ensuring students get access to grade-level work daily and rejecting the “mental tracking” that leads educators to lower expectations for some students
“Every student can reach our high expectations,” she said. “We have had students skip three proficiency levels in one year.”
Brawley leads one of the state’s most improved districts. African American students in Compton outperform African American students statewide on all measures.
He attributes the gains to disciplined systems — “setting the vision,” developing SMART goals, holding regular principal data chats, and using performance data to adjust instruction throughout the year. He stressed that Compton’s progress comes from consistent monitoring, clear expectations and staying focused on results for every student group.
While encouraged by the improvements, Brawley cautions that no one should “pat themselves on the back” while achievement gaps remain — and says the same data-driven approach is guiding Compton’s next phase of work for African American students and all learners.
The California School Boards Association says the state must be held accountable for its own role in addressing the gap experienced by African American students. Flint said California has “a hodgepodge of projects and mandates” instead of a coherent strategy.
The association wants the state to publish goals, benchmarks and what Flint calls a “state of the gap” dashboard that evaluates how well state agencies are supporting districts and holds the state itself accountable — just as it holds districts.
Thurmond, when asked about association concerns, defended the state’s initiatives and investments but agreed that the state must measure itself. He said he is open to working with the association to create a statewide accountability tool analogous to the local Dashboard.
Despite their different roles in the system — state leader, school district leaders, charter operators, and representative of school boards — these educators are not contradicting one another. Their perspectives align: Black students can achieve at high levels, but they all agree: California must commit to the practices that work and deliver them consistently statewide.
Thurmond stresses progress and the value of state investments. Fortune and Bishop emphasize what must happen inside classrooms: rigorous instruction, strong teaching and eliminating low expectations. Brawley shows how disciplined systems translate investment into results. The school board association stresses the need for a coherent statewide plan and state-level accountability.
Their views echo the late educator Ron Edmonds, whose research in the 1970s on effective schools remains a touchstone in Black education.
Edmonds famously said: “We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that.” His point was blunt: inequitable outcomes are not mysteries — they are choices.
What these Black leaders are saying today follows directly from that insight.
Joe W. Bowers Jr. is an editor for California Black Media.
