By Sujie Shin

Despite years of focused efforts on addressing gaps in academic access and outcomes for African American students, Dashboard data continues to show a significant gap across all key measures. In 2025, for example, Black students met grade-level standards at two-thirds the rate of the State average in English Language Arts (ELA) and almost half the rate of the State average in Math (2024-25 CAASPP). Black students are also more than twice as likely to be suspended than other students, and lag behind all other student groups in graduation rates. These persistent disparities underscore the need for sustained, system-level efforts to improve outcomes for Black students.

The African American Student Success Network is a community of practice facilitated by the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE), in partnership with the California Association of African American Superintendents and Administrators (CAAASA) that is tackling these disparities. District and county office teams convene monthly to share updates, best practices, and identify next steps for inquiry in their work to address systemic inequities in outcomes for African American students in their school systems.

How Districts Are Tackling This Work

The current cohort of this Network comprises teams from 11 districts and county offices who have been engaged in continuous improvement processes over the past several years to tackle a pervasive academic outcome gap for Black students in their school systems. These areas of focus are determined by the local educational agency (LEA) teams through an examination of district, school, grade-level, and student group data, complemented by systems analyses and input from students and families through surveys and focus groups. Together, these efforts help teams better understand the nature of the achievement gap and identify a single change idea to implement and measure. Areas of focus vary across the Network, including addressing disproportionality in Special Education identification rates, examining teaching and learning in middle school mathematics, and reducing the number of non-passing grades in high school core classes.

Once Network teams identified their problems of practice and implemented their change ideas, they focused on collecting and analyzing data to understand whether their strategies were having the impact on student outcomes they had hoped for, for whom, and to what extent. Through this work, the teams uncovered and worked to address additional systemic challenges that hindered their ability to collect, analyze, visualize, and communicate their data.

For example, several LEA teams developed more robust survey tools and processes to gather additional input from students and families about their awareness of and access to available support services and programs. One district re-envisioned their classroom observation protocols to emphasize their updated expectations that embed culturally responsive principles of instructional practice. Another district invested a year in deep professional learning around their data systems, focusing on integrating data across their various data sources, and created an internal dashboard highlighting progress on their local data indicators. Across the Network, all districts also spent the year strengthening approaches for reflection, as well as creating a greater sense of belonging and inclusion for all students in their schools, with the understanding that this work would shape the ways adults at all levels of the school system interact with students.

What We Are Beginning To See Change

While this work is still in its early stages, and each district is focused on a problem of practice that is particular to their own community needs and goals, aggregated analyses of data are showing substantial and promising effects across the Network. Compared with African American students in the rest of the state, African American students in participating districts saw greater improvement over the past two years in both ELA and Math, as measured by increases in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards and decreases in distance from standard (DFS).

African American students in participating districts also experienced greater decreases in chronic absenteeism and suspension rates than African American students in the rest of the state.

Looking Ahead

This is still early data, and there are deeper questions that Network participants will be exploring in the coming year. Each district focused on a problem of practice tackling an aspect of broader access and achievement gaps identified in their school systems. The exciting news is that even focusing on improving outcomes for a smaller group of students can have a broader impact across the district. These initial data analyses suggest that something distinct and different is happening for African American students in these districts than for African American students in the rest of the state. The question for us this year is how to expand this work–not just for students in participating districts, but for students throughout the state. We will share more as we learn more. In the meantime, please stay connected with us!