Statement of Problem
California Community Colleges (CCC) are the main gateway to higher education, and CCC students make up 64% of all undergraduates in the state (California Tomorrow, 2008). Since CCCs are the most affordable option for higher education in California, they also serve the neediest students with the greatest socio-economic disadvantage. The system has the highest proportion of students from the lowest income group in the nation. Seventy-five percent of all first-time Latino, African American and Native American college students get their start in California community colleges. Sixty-five percent of students are students of color in the CCC system, the highest proportion in the country (California Tomorrow, 2008). These students come to the CCC the least academically prepared. In Closing the Achievement Gap, the California P-16 Council and Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell’s (2008) office state that “the 2006 Academic Performance Index (API) of African American, American Indian, Hispanic/Latino, and Pacific Islander students is significantly lower than the API for white and Asian students at every level: elementary, middle, and high school.” A closer examination of this data finds that African American students are at the bottom across all grade levels for any ethnic group and income level.
All Latino, African American and Native American students are on par with white and Asian students when it comes to gaining access to the community college system. However once African American students are in the system, their outlook for academic success is dismal. African American college students consistently earn lower grade point averages; have lower rates of success in their courses, and persistence from term to term as compared to other ethnic groups. Shulock and Moore (2007) highlight these challenges concluding that African American students have a 52% retention rate to the following term and only a 39% retention rate to the second year as compared to their white counterparts at 62% and 50% respectively. They further observe that black students’ course completion rate is 49% as compared to 64% for white students. Furthermore, according to the Chancellor’s Office Datamart, as a whole, African American students have earned a consistently decreasing grade point average (GPA) over the past 10 years and in 2005-06 African American male students had the lowest annual average GPA of any group at 2.09…more