By Brandon Patterson

Emeryville’s school district is celebrating dramatic improvements in its Black students’ standardized test scores from 2022 to 2023, bucking statewide and even national trends where Black students’ scores remained largely stagnant or declined slightly year over year.

In Emery Unified School District, where Black children are 45% of the student population, they made double-digit gains in their English and math scores.

The percentage of Black students reading and writing at grade level increased from 24% to 37% and the math proficiency score increased from 9% to 15%.

Overall, Black students’ test scores remain significantly below statewide averages – California students’ English and math proficiency scores were about 45% and 35% for English and math respectively in 2023, down slightly for both from 2022 – but the trend upward is an encouraging sign that Emery Unified’s targeted efforts are working.

Chronic absenteeism among Black students also dropped 8.4% from 2022 to 2023 far more than the state average.

“I see these pockets of hope, these glimmers of possibility, and think, how can we replicate this?” Tyrone Howard, a professor of education at UCLA, told Cal Matters about Emery. “Emery Unified is on my radar, and it’s important to find out what’s happening there.”

Black students’ have long lagged behind other groups academically, Howard continued, because they are more likely to attend schools with less experienced teachers and are more likely to be homeless, in foster care or living in poverty — all factors that can hinder academic performance. Howard, added: racism in the form of “low expectations and a lack of resources for Black students plays just as much a factor as anything else.”

So, what is Emeryville doing differently?

Jessica Goode, the principal at Emery High School, says the school has paid teachers extra to tutor students after school.  Additionally, the school has also started taking students on college tours around the state, expanded its skilled trades program, and increased its student mental health resources.

Emery Unified has also long prioritized hiring Black teachers, which research has shown has an important impact on Black students’ success. Black teachers make up more than 30% of the school district’s educators, compared to less than 4% statewide.

The school also recently shifted to a “grading for equity” system with a focus more on measuring students’ knowledge at the end of a grading period versus their in-class behavior or whether they turned homework in on time. That system motivated students and gave teachers a better idea of how students were progressing, according to Goode.

Meanwhile, at the elementary school, principal Samantha Burke credits improvement in her students’ English scores partly to a unique approach that aims to hone students’ writing skills even before they can read.

In kindergarten, she told Cal Matters, students learn to “write” stories by drawing pictures, eventually adding works and short sentences to the mix to develop their skills as storytellers.

In higher grades, students are practicing a range of writing styles, including opinion pieces, fictional narratives, and expository writing. Elementary English proficiency scores increased by 5% from 2022 to 2023.

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