Black students perform better when segregated, say diversity experts

Educators in Evanston, Illinois are offering classes segregated by race to better help students perform, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

Black and Latino students at Evanston Township High School (ETHS) have been struggling, according to school officials, a trend which standardized tests show is occurring across the country.

“Our Black students are, for lack of a better word . . . at the bottom, consistently still. And they are being outperformed consistently,” said Evanston School Board Vice President Monique Parsons at a board meeting this month. “It’s not good.”

Evanston is therefore offering courses in English writing and core math — including algebra 2 and precalculus — strictly for Black and Latino students separately, with each class taught by a non-White teacher. The school is also offering a segregated AP calculus course to address the low participation rate of Black and Latino students in advanced placement courses.

Only a quarter of Black students and a third of Latino students enroll in AP courses in Evanston’s 3,600-student school, compared with three-quarters of White students. Of those who enrolled in AP courses for the 2021–2022 school year, 48% of Black test takers scored passed, compared with 61% of Latinos and 80% of Whites.

Almost 200 Black and Latino students have so far signed up for the segregated classes, which have been termed “affinity courses.” Because they are optional, they do not violate federal discrimination laws.

“Recognizing that racism is the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished achievement of students, ETHS will strive to eliminate the predictability of academic achievement based upon race,” says one of the school board’s goals.

Evanston is not the first district to offer segregated classes. School districts in Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Oakland, California have been doing so for years.

An internal study by the Minneapolis Public School District in 2017 found that Black boys who attended Black-only classes had an average GPA of 2.27, higher than the 2.14 GPA average score achieved by other Black boys in the district.

“A lot of times within our education system, Black students are expected to conform to a white standard,” said Minneapolis Black Student Achievement Program Director Dena Luna, a diversity expert. “In our spaces, you don’t have to shed one ounce of yourself because everything about our space is rooted in Blackness,” she added.

A 2019 study conducted by the Oakland Unified School District in California found that Black boys who attended Black-only programs were less likely to drop out of school.

Precalculus was Evanston’s first segregated course when the initiative began in 2019. But school teachers, board members, and other officials have been extremely tight-lipped around reporters, says the Wall Street Journal. When a journalist from the publication attended a school board meeting for parents of Black students, a district official threatened to cancel the meeting unless the reporter left.

But according to student testimonials shared by Evanston teachers, segregated courses are a major hit.

“I feel like I represent me and not the whole black race in this AP class,” said one student. “It’s a safe space. In AP classes that are mostly white, I feel like if I answer wrong, I am representing all black kids. I stay quiet in those classes.”

A part-Latina student attending a Latino-only course said, “I feel accepted for the first time in a long time.”