By Srishti Prabha and Tony Rodriguez | OBSERVER Staff Reporter
Since he was 12 years old, Florin High School senior Da’Marus Lewis Jr. dreamed of attending the University of California, Los Angeles. But the tides turned when COVID-19 hit and his grades plummeted.
“I was really struggling with my mental health, and I wasn’t doing good academically. I couldn’t follow those dreams,” said Lewis.
No longer on track to meet the requirements needed to apply to UCLA, or any of California’s four-year public universities, he said he felt hopeless about the future.
“I tend to not reach out to people when I need it,” he said. “I let myself get into the headspace where I felt like I couldn’t go forward.”
Florin High School senior Da’Marus Lewis Jr.Russell Stiger Jr. / The Sacramento Observer
Lewis is just one of many of Sacramento County’s Black and brown students in this position.
A deeper look into the county’s six largest school districts — Sacramento City Unified, Elk Grove Unified, Folsom Cordova Unified, Natomas Unified, Twin Rivers and San Juan Unified — reveals the numerous obstacles that students of color face on their path to higher education.
Students, educators and researchers point to cultural bias, inadequate information on the University of California and California State University requirements, and tracked classes relegating students to remedial settings as potentially deterring them from future economic mobility.
In Sacramento County, less than half of the student body has completed the required coursework to apply for four-year public universities like the UCs and CSUs. And Black and brown students meet those requirements at lower rates than their peers.
The now 17-year-old Lewis turned to Improve Your Tomorrow, a preparatory program focused on the college achievement gap for Black and brown boys at Florin High. With the guidance of the program’s mentors of color, he has his sights set on ultimately attending CSU Long Beach, and possibly being the first in his immediate family to graduate from college.
College intervention programs — like Improve Your Tomorrow, Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, and United College Action Network, or UCAN — undertake the responsibility of exploring the critical role of embedded, representative support and alternative pathways.
“Growing up, I never noticed a lot of attention for people that look like me,” Lewis said. “So as an African-American, to walk into this space [that is] predominantly African-American, it is really welcoming, and it feels like I belong in academics.”
Data shows large portion of Sacramento students are unprepared for state public universities
Sacramento County’s college readiness data paints an unpromising picture of general inaccessibility for all students in the region, with the inequality gap widening for Black and brown students.
Graduation from high school alone is not enough to be admitted into California’s UC and CSU campuses. And the UC and CSU requirements, or A-G classes, are not the default track that all students in Sacramento County are put on.
To qualify for California’s public universities, students must complete their minimum graduation requirements and A-G requirements with “C’s” or better. The A-G coursework minimum involves taking:
- two years of history or social science
- four years of English
- three years of mathematics
- two or three years of science laboratory
- two years of a foreign language
- one year of visual and performing arts
- a college preparatory elective
San Juan Unified’s college readiness rates are some of the lowest in Sacramento. The district reports that only 29% of Hispanic, 17% of Black, and 10% of Indigenous students are completing the A-G curriculum mandates to apply for four-year public universities in California. Comparatively, 37% of white and 47% of Asian students meet the same criteria.
Kristan Schnepp, the district’s assistant superintendent, said she is aware of the overall low college-going rates and the inequitable practices at their schools.
“Students of color might not have had success in some of the more challenging classes because of adult mindsets, lack of equitable grading practices and expectations,” said Schnepp. “Our goal is to have students pass classes on the first try, but especially post-pandemic, what we’re seeing is the biggest barrier right now is math.”
Student interest in pursuing higher education can falter when the coursework feels unwieldy. Michael Lynch, CEO of Improve Your Tomorrow, facilitates Black and brown students’ completion of the A-G curriculum. He finds the requirements arbitrary. Many of his students become ineligible to apply for CSUs and UCs because they got a D or lower in a foreign language or math class.
“Math is important but why three years? Why not four years? Why not two years? What is the metric of success that’s there that you have to take three years of math in order for you to be successful?” asked Lynch.
For Sacramento State’s Executive Director of Admission Outreach Brian Henley, the admissions office considers the A-G coursework completion as a model for a student’s possible success at the institution.
“I think a strong component of what happens in college is [around] all that general education stuff that students take,” said Henley. “That starts in high school. I hear this Spanish word and I’m able to make that connection to the English word and begin to understand how languages and different cultures interact.”
While CSUs and UCs attempt to recognize an applicant’s potential issues in meeting the A-G requirements, their only alternative solution to mitigate systemic bias is an appeal process.
Students face barriers — including misconceptions — on their path to college
In addition to the coursework itself, Black and brown students confront bias from instructors and mitigate demands in their personal life that can have educational consequences that follow them to college.
Executive Director of Education Equity Solutions Mina Dadgar’s research outlines the consequences of relegating students to remedial math in a community college classroom setting when they don’t complete their A-G requirements, and the prolonged impacts of educational barriers on student success once they enter community college in California.
She finds that the first college-level math course is considered “gatekeeper math,” where pass rates are generally lower than 50% in the state and much lower for Black, brown and Indigenous students.
“Years of research in higher education shows that remediation reduces chances of graduating [from college].” Dadgar said. “After years, the earnings of people who are placed in remediation are lower.”
Instead, her research points to fostering belonging in math classes, providing embedded support within the classroom and offering equitable accommodations for Black and brown students.
“Instructors are the number one predictor of whether students succeed,” said Dadgar. She also suggests that high schools can adopt these tactics as a catalyst to spark interest in academia.
“Our research is to dismantle the narrative that students are not succeeding because they lack motivation,” said Dadgar. “That is a prevailing narrative, and these narratives are what is driving inequitable policies.”
Students attend the San Juan Unified School District’s college night. Data show that less than half of Sacramento County students meet the requirements for the state’s four-year universities.Russell Stiger Jr.
Tracie Locke, San Juan Unifies’s lead counselor and manager of the AVID program — a college preparatory elective class students can choose to sign up for — said their program takes in students from “underrepresented groups and gives them the support structure and family sense” to pursue higher education.
“College-going rates in our AVID program are relatively high,” said Locke. Of the 250 seniors out of 2,800 in the district enrolled in the AVID, 97% were college-going last year, a much higher rate than the average student in the district.
But, AVID targets those in the middle to high-performing academic group and requires an inherent interest and general knowledge on how to navigate higher education. Locke explained that the AVID curriculum is rigorous, which can dissuade those in the lower-performing academic groups, many times Black and brown students.
“It’s the lack of desire [from those students],” Locke said. “I don’t know if that’s just because of expectations or their day-to-day requirements, but that seems to be a big theme that’s emerging over the last several years.”
These types of sentiments can be discouraging for students like Lewis, who haven’t seen representation in academics and have parents who work multiple jobs to sustain their family’s needs.
Other educators say the issue has less to do with a student’s motivations. UCAN, an organization focused on Sacramento’s students of color at an academic disadvantage, probes beneath the surface of a student’s obvious performance indicators.
“Everybody is not motivated in the same way and it’s important to find out what’s going to motivate kids,” said Alan Rowe, founder of UCAN. “And that’s where I think our school systems are lacking or falling short.”
For Johan Cardenas, a former Improve Your Tomorrow graduate, it was not a lack of desire to go to college that acted as a barrier. He migrated from Mexico to South Sacramento when he was 15 years old. New to Valley High School and Elk Grove Unified’s system, an English language learner and with only one parent for support, the odds were stacked against him.
“I remember asking, ‘How do I go to college? I want to go to college,’ to my counselor. They said, ‘You won’t be able to go to college because you are way behind,’” explained Cardenas.
Completing coursework and navigating the college-readiness network was arduous for Cardenas and Lewis. What appeared as a lack of desire was rooted in underlying challenges.
Non-profits work to get more Sacramento students into college
Amid the educational disparities for Black and brown students, some educators, universities and college readiness organizations are working to try and find ways for graduates to move on to higher education.
A 2021 report by the California Budget and Policy Center reinforced apprehensions about the gaps between UC, CSU and high school requirements, subsequently causing inequities for marginalized students. The report highlights that Black and brown students were less likely to complete the A-G requirements in California due to “limited access to critical academic support and counseling” which included qualified teachers who knew how to work with diverse audiences.
One of the report’s recommendations is to modify the A-G coursework to improve the inequity of access to public universities in the state. Lynch advocates for this model: “A system that works is when a student is placed on an A-G default curriculum.”
Unlike in Sacramento City Unified, most districts in the county do not automatically enroll students into the classes mandated for UCs and CSUs. And within those districts, the A-G requirements are not always common knowledge.
“The first barrier that students continue to face is around advising and information. Parents don’t have that information, especially with the local community of color,” Lynch said. “Programs like AVID, which are phenomenal, serve a small set of students, typically students who are in the academic middle, or are the highest performing.”
Improve Your Tomorrow Program Manager Bryan Kennedy speaks with student Da’Marus Lewis Jr.Russell Stiger Jr. / The Sacramento Observer
Gaps in these success rates among students of color exist even with the presence of involved college readiness organizations on campuses. These resources, though, if taken advantage of, can act as a gateway to potential student success.
Over at UCAN, if a student in their program is not meeting the A-G prerequisite, they are not automatically placed on a community college track. Rowe and the historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, that he works with redefine what it means to be ready for academia.
“If you have an F, but you have mostly A’s and B’s, that doesn’t exclude you from being able to go to an HBCU,” advocated Rowe.
UCAN’s annual HBCU college fair offers a direct connection to students of color seeking alternatives to public universities that seemingly make it difficult for students with an under-resourced upbringing.
Hakim Reynolds, a senior at Grant Union High School, said that the UCAN program, along with their HBCU network, was imperative to his pursuit of higher education. Three months into the school year, he has already been accepted to his top three HBCUs.
“UCAN has [mentors] that graduated from an HBCU, so they tell me their experience and how they messed up or how they recovered,” he said. “And I don’t get that from a counselor. They don’t really give me a backstory of how they went to college.”
Though on-site college counselors are accessible, many times they have a caseload of up to several hundred students, which can be unrealistic and unmanageable, according to Lynch. Peer mentorship, directed support and cultural inclusivity, like with the UCAN and Improve Your Tomorrow program, can help address counselor oversights.
Justice Spears, a Sacramento Charter High School senior, finds that “a lot of people don’t get the opportunity” to utilize college learning resources. UCAN is “helping people understand more about college and HBCUs.”
Culturally responsive, representative support is a void highlighted by Black and brown students. At UCAN’s HBCU college fair at Sacramento Charter High, Spears said a UCAN staff member immediately welcomed her into the space, reminding her of her family gatherings.
“She said I can call her ‘Aunty’ and it was really refreshing,” Spears said, underscoring the importance of familiarity in a space where the expectations match her potential.
Unfortunately, unlike Improve Your Tomorrow, UCAN’s services are not embedded into the framework of the school day, and Black and brown students can continue to slip through the cracks. After the pandemic, Lewis said he would have been a casualty of the education system if it had not been for an embedded college access program.
“[Mentors at Improve Your Tomorrow] have really shown concern and care for the way I’m going in life,” said Lewis. “And even outside of academics, they care about what’s going on at home.”
Despite many dedicated efforts to improve the college readiness for Black and brown students, the data continues to depict a complex and concerning reality in Sacramento.
The power of embedded or culturally responsive programs like UCAN and Improve Your Tomorrow becomes self-evident when students like Lewis share their stories of having people in their corner: “It makes me feel unstoppable like I really can achieve anything that I want in life.”
Srishti Prabha is an education reporter and Report For America corps member in collaboration with CapRadio and The Sacramento Observer. Their focus is K-12 education in Sacramento’s Black communities.