Learning Notebook - David Rostcheck
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African Americans score lower than European Americans on vocabulary, reading, and math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence. The gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into adulthood. It has narrowed since 1970, but the typical American black still scores below 75 percent of American whites on almost every standardized test. This statistic does not imply, of course, that all blacks score below all whites. There is a lot of overlap between the two groups. Nonetheless, the test score gap is large enough to have significant social and economic consequences. Narrowing the test score gap would require continuous effort by both blacks and whites, and it would probably take more than one generation. But we think it can be done. This conviction rests on three facts. First, black-white differences in academic achievement have narrowed since 1970. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data on 17-year-olds show that the reading gap narrowed more than two-fifths between 1971 and 1994. The math gap has also narrowed, though not as much. Five major national surveys of high school seniors conducted since 1965 show the same trend. So do surveys of younger students. The gap narrowed because black children’s scores rose, not because white children’s scores fell.
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