LAUSD’s Black Student Achievement Program Upended, Targeted by Conservative Virginia Group

Under pressure after a conservative group took legal action, the Los Angeles Unified School District will overhaul a $120-million academic program for struggling Black students by eliminating race as a factor in determining which children will be helped.

The decision has outraged supporters of the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, who are demanding that officials stand by the original program, which had begun to yield some early, positive results.

The Virginia-based group Parents Defending Education — whose mission is to oppose “destructive practices” in schools, including policies related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity — had filed a complaint in July 2023 with the federal Office for Civil Rights against BSAP.

It alleged the program violated the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by providing extra education services based on a student’s race.

Over months of dialogue, federal officials told the district that a race-based program was legally unsustainable in light of multiple Supreme Court decisions, including the June 2023 ruling that struck down the consideration of race as a factor in college admissions.

The Virginia group’s trustees include Edward Blum, who founded the organization behind the lawsuit leading to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, according to tax filings.

The group’s action against L.A. Unified reflects a broader playbook of the political right, which has fueled culture-war divides across the nation through school board elections and litigation. Its agenda encompasses restricting how race and the Black experience are taught, removing books with LGBTQ+ content from school libraries and curriculum and pushing for policies that require schools to notify parents when their child asks to change their name, pronouns or gender presentation.

“The Los Angeles Unified School District is offering race-based programming for some students that is not open to all,” the Virginia group said in an online post. {snip}

In response, the district agreed to end the exclusive focus on Black students and instead identify students and schools through factors other than race, the district confirmed to The Times.

Word of the overhaul, made without public discussion, filtered out in August to those involved in BSAP, including Ebony Batiste, a restorative justice teacher at 74th Street Elementary School in South L.A.

“There’s a lot of historical and systemic inequities that, if we’re not going to address them, Black children are going to continue to fail,” Batiste said. “Sometimes I feel like every time we try, our hands are tied behind our back, and we’re not being allowed to help the children that need help.”

The entire mindset of the complaint is exasperating to UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard.

“The conservative groups would sit by idly when there are a disproportionate number of Black people in jails and prisons,” Howard said. “They’ll sit by idly when there’s large numbers of Black students who are misplaced in special education classrooms. They’ll sit by silently when there are large numbers of Black students who are not graduating from high school. But yet, when there’s a remedy, an attempt to somehow respond, to combat that, then all of a sudden, there’s this anger, and there’s lawsuits. That’s the part that disappoints. I just wish that we lived in a different political climate.”

The L.A. Unified program, approved and funded by the Board of Education in 2021, added school staff including a psychiatric social worker, an attendance counselor, a parent or community representative and an academic counselor specifically to help Black students, who make up 7% of the district’s 410,000 students. BSAP schools also received money to enhance curriculum and employee training. Educators hoped that, with extra support, students could focus on their studies and thrive.

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With the same level of resources now going also to students who are not Black, some campuses with smaller numbers of Black students appear unlikely to receive continued extra support.

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Black students in Los Angeles Unified, and in many urban school systems, have long had the lowest achievement scores overall of any racial group — although the highest-achieving students have always included Black students. The causes for these struggles are complex, but scholars cite a history of discrimination, family and community trauma, limited opportunities, cultural insensitivity embodied by higher suspension rates and low expectations from educators.

L.A. Unified has launched multiple attempts over recent decades to raise achievement with limited success — and also a lack of continuity.

About 15 years ago, the same Office for Civil Rights had investigated whether the district was denying equal educational opportunities to Black students and students learning English. The review resulted in a 2011 agreement that required services specific to these groups.

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A school initially qualified for BSAP if it had at least 200 Black students and they were not doing well by at least one key measure. Schools with 100 to 200 Black students could qualify if there were multiple warning flags. The measures included standardized test scores, attendance and suspension rates.

There were 53 such schools that became part of what was called Group 1. A similar number of schools were identified as Group 2, with somewhat fewer resources. Two more groups — with less intense needs or fewer Black students — were added later, at a lower level of support.

Under the new framework, Group 1 and 2 schools will receive continued services — but qualifying factors will not include race. Officials said any other district school can apply for BSAP-type services and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Some 81% of all district students are from low-income families. The district is 73% Latino and these students, too, are struggling academically even if, as a group, they fare somewhat better than Black students.

The school district has been slow to staff the program as intended, which makes evaluation difficult. Two years in, for example, about half the targeted attendance counselors had been provided. The district said that, entering the fourth year, 90% of the staffing has been hired for the original Group 1 and 2 schools.

Early results show some improvement in how Black students feel about school and the extra support. There was a big jump in the number of students who said they felt they had an advocate and access to mental health resources.

Other indicators have been mixed. Based on the district’s most recent posted data, from the 2022-23 school year, fewer Black students achieved a passing score on Advanced Placement exams than in the previous year, although more enrolled in AP or honors classes.

Tests taken in spring 2024 show improvement in both English and math — a trend also reflected statewide for Black students, although Black students in L.A. Unified are now scoring a little better than Black students statewide.

Overall in 2024 in L.A. Unified, 31% of Black students were meeting English standards, compared with 37% of Latino students, 66% of white students and 77% of Asian students. In math, the figures were 21% for Black students, 27% for Latino students, 58% for white students and 74% for Asian students.

By 11th grade, 12% of Black students were scoring at grade-level math standards.

Black and Latino students and families were hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and campus closures — and experts have recorded the academic harm across the country.

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