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100 Black Men of Silicon Valley
100 Black Men

The 3 Test: Schools

Sources & methodology

The cohort funnel on this page combines two regimes. The early-K-12 stages (reading, GATE, discipline) are chained as a cumulative academic-foundation funnel. The later stages (A-G coursework, high-school graduation, college enrollment, bachelor's degree, professional career) are population baselines for Black males in California — not chained from the K-8 stages. The Stage 9 endpoint (~7 of 100 in a professional career) is an explicit magnitude estimate, combining NCES bachelor's-completion data with BLS occupational data. Where "Black male" specifically is not broken out, we use the Black-overall figure and apply a documented discount. The assumption chain is published below in full.

The assumption chain

Every cohort_size_per_100 value on the page is cumulative — share of the original 100 still on track at each stage. Computed as the chain of stage-conditional probabilities below. Source data lives in pipeline_stages.csv.

StageRateRationale
S02 — Reading proficient (age 9) 17 of 100 (chained) CA NAEP/CAASPP Black male estimate (~30% Black overall, ~17% Black males specifically — males trail Black females by ~6-10 pts).
S03 — GATE / gifted (age 11) ~60% of S02 → 10 of 100 OCR data: Black gifted students identified at ~50% the rate of white peers even when proficient. 17 × ~0.6 ≈ 10.
S04 — Not suspended through middle school (age 13) ~70% of S03 → 7 of 100 EdSource: Black suspension rate 3x white rate; cumulative K-8 suspension probability for Black boys ~30%+. 10 × ~0.7 ≈ 7. End of the chained portion of the funnel.
S05 — Complete A-G coursework (age 17) 33 of 100 (population baseline) ACLU CA State of Black Education 2024: 33% of Black CA students finish A-G coursework. NOT chained from S04 — this is the population-wide A-G completion rate for Black students. ~67 of 100 leave high school UC/CSU-ineligible.
S06 — Graduate HS on time (age 18) 83 of 100 (population baseline) CA ACGR 2023-24, Black males ~83%. Population-wide rate. Comparison: ~90% for white students.
S07 — Enroll 4-yr college immediately (age 19) ~33% of S06 graduates → 27 of 100 NCES Indicator CPA — Black male immediate 4-year enrollment historically ~25-30%. 83 × ~0.33 ≈ 27.
S08 — Complete bachelor's degree (age 25) ~40% of S07 enrollees → 11 of 100 NCES BPS:12/17 — 6-year bachelor's completion at 4-year institutions ~37-40% for Black males vs ~63% for white males. 27 × ~0.40 ≈ 11.
S09 — Working in a professional career (age 27) ~70% of S08 bachelor's → 7 of 100 MAGNITUDE ESTIMATE. BLS Current Population Survey: 25-29-year-olds with a bachelor's degree are ~70-80% employed in management, professional, and related occupations. 11 × ~0.7 ≈ 7. California all-male comparison: ~17 of 100.

Two breakpoints to watch. Stage 7 (HS graduation) is the population baseline for Black males in California, not chained from the AP CS funnel. Of the ~1 Black boy who passed AP CS, essentially all graduate. Of the 83 who graduate, only ~1 ever declares CS. The 0.3 endpoint assumes the CS-track funnel feeds directly into SV tech hiring. Real life is more porous (bootcamps, non-CS majors, lateral moves), but the net Black male share of SV tech is ~1.5–2% — consistent with the 0.3 figure when scaled.

Data hygiene notes

  • Where data is “Black students” only (not Black-male-specifically), this is flagged in the underlying CSV. Black male outcomes are typically 4–8 percentage points worse than the Black-overall figure across reading, graduation, and college enrollment.
  • Where Santa Clara County data is not separately published by race × gender × stage, California state data is used as a proxy. SCC has only ~1.7% Black K-12 students — small enough that some breakouts are suppressed. The SCC pipeline is likely worse than the state average, not better.
  • The Stage 9 endpoint (~7 of 100 in a professional or managerial career) is a magnitude estimate, not a literal count. It combines NCES bachelor\'s-completion data with BLS occupational data on degree-holder employment. It is a lower bound for one common definition of "professional career" — some Black men reach professional careers without a bachelor\'s (sales, real estate, trades, entrepreneurship), and those are not counted here.
  • Class of 2028 (entered fall 2024) was the first under the post-SCOTUS affirmative-action ruling. Future data will likely show further compression at Stages 7–8.
  • The Silicon Valley tech subset of Stage 9 is much narrower than the broader professional-career endpoint — see the workforce companion at /the-3-test for that breakdown.

Stage 1 — Kindergarten enrollment / baseline

Stage 2 — 4th grade reading proficiency

Stage 3 — GATE / gifted / honors identification

Stage 4 — Suspension / school discipline

Stage 5 — A-G college-prep coursework (CSU/UC eligibility)

Stage 7 — High school graduation

Stage 8 — Immediate 4-year college enrollment

Stage 8 — Bachelor’s degree completion

Stage 9 — Professional / managerial career

Companion data — Bay Area universities and the Silicon Valley tech labor market

Cross-cutting context

Download the data

  • pipeline_stages.csvThe core cohort funnel — one row per stage, with cumulative cohort_size_per_100, comparison cohort, source, and notes.
  • bay_area_universities.csvCS enrollment and degree counts at Stanford, UC Berkeley, SJSU, SCU, UC Santa Cruz, CSU East Bay.
  • headline_stats.csvStandalone punchy stats (reading, suspensions, AP, CS, hiring) with source URLs.
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