The recent Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies report on the steep enrollment declines of Black male students at community colleges is a stark reminder that our sector must accelerate the crucial work to ensure the academic success of Black male students.
In the light of decades-long enrollment declines and historic low enrollment numbers among Black, Latinx and Indigenous students, our work is an uphill battle but not insurmountable. The pandemic exacerbated the need to transform our institutions to being more student centered, keeping in mind the unique needs of racially marginalized students.
Francesca I. Carpenter
While it is tempting to look at all the external factors that impact every institution’s ability to solve the larger societal problem of historical racism, our colleges won’t make significant progress without efforts to systematically address their institutional structures and practices that perpetuate inequities.
Economist Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce makes a compelling case that U.S. higher education, by virtue of its prominence in economic life, is now “the capstone in an education system that is a primary cause of the reproduction of race and class privilege across generations.” Carnevale says that postsecondary education and training “mimics and magnifies the inequality that it inherits from the pre-K–12 system. It then projects this inequality into labor markets, housing markets, and local school districts, guaranteeing the intergenerational transmission of race and class privilege.”
Since its founding, Achieving the Dream has been focused on helping institutions deliver more equitable results in student success. In recent years we have recognized the need to go beyond incremental changes and help institutions recognize our nation’s persistent racism to create more equitable institutions. Since 2020, ATD has partnered with the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center to create the Racial Equity Leadership Academy (RELA), an intensive institute that supports teams of community college leaders as they develop strategic racial equity plans and consciously dismantle barriers to equity at their institutions.
For the past two years, the first cohort of 10 institutions have introduced challenging racial equity change efforts and conversations to catalyze cultural change at their institutions, focusing on three key areas:
