🇺🇸 Half of Black Students Can Barely Read

The racial wealth gap in the Bay Area starts with the stunning test scores coming out of our education system.

SPUR crunched Census data on the financial situations of Bay Area ethnic groups and the image reveals Black residents are being left behind region-wide, with particular acuteness in San Francisco. In the epicenter of Silicon Valley, Black income growth lagged behind White and Asian households. In the East Bay and Solano County, Black households saw a raise of just $10,000 over 10 years. But San Francisco was the worst of all: the Black community’s income barely budged since 2010. Black San Franciscans live in the shadow of a technology and wealthy renaissance that have exploded the incomes of their white neighbors.

In 2021, 47% of Black students in SFUSD that are high school juniors don’t even come close to meeting English-language proficiency. That’s 9% higher than the state average for Black 11th graders — which is also abysmal. That means for every one of two Black students leaving San Francisco high schools they can’t read for their age. Including students who are close but still not proficient: 71.5% of Black high school juniors in San Francisco cannot read at a proficient level, compared to 20.3% of Asian students, 22.6% of White students, 32% of Filipino students and 61.8% of Hispanic students. It was bad pre-pandemic as well but it’s gotten a few percentage points worse.

🔗 https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/half-of-black-students-can-hardly