… Across the district, 19 percent of them [San Francisco public school black students] passed the state test in reading, compared to 31 percent of black students statewide. The result: San Francisco, a progressive enclave and beacon for technological innovation, has the worst black student achievement of any county in California. …
One strategy designed to boost academic achievement across the district and better prepare students to join a modern workforce is a citywide focus on science, technology, engineering and math instruction. Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School anchors that effort in the Bayview.
The gleaming $55 million campus with state-of-the-art laboratories and floor-to-ceiling windows with panoramic city views opened to fanfare in 2015 on the site of Willie Brown College Preparatory Academy, which was under-enrolled, had low test scores and was crumbling before the city tore it down in 2011. …
Last academic year, at a school named for the city’s first black mayor, only 10 percent of black students passed the state test in reading and 2 percent passed math—an improvement from the prior school year when none of the school’s black students passed the math exam. …
