A Common Destiny Blacks and American Society (1989) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Schooling of Black Americans
The Schooling of Black Americans
Pages 329-390
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Ill ' 7.le ~ i row ._ __ ~_ MAYA Jacob Lawrence Graduation (1948) Gouache on paper The Evans-Tibbs Collection, Washington, D.C.
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At other times, convinced that equal-quality education and segregated schools were incompatible, they have fought to integrate schools. At all times, blacks have sought educational excellence and equal educational opportunity.
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First, the chapter details changes in the basic outcomes of schooling such as levels of enrollment and attainment. Second, it describes changes in school performance, using achievement test scores and other indicators.
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From page 333... ...
Although the effects of participation in early schooling on academic achievement are mixed, the correlation of early school entry with later school leaving does point to continuing growth in educational attainment. Figure 7-2 shows age-specific school enrollment rates of cohorts of black and white children at ages 3, 4, and 5 from 1968 to 1985.
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From page 334... ...
. Consequently, we rely on reports of schooling at ages 2529 as our main source of information about high school completion.
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1970 1 980 whites (see Figure 7-3~. While useful, however, median years of education can be misleading as an indicator of group differences because educational attainments of blacks and whites have become so concentrated at several transition points in the schooling process, especially at high school graduation.
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From page 336... ...
1940 1950 1960 YEAR (b) 12 or More Years 60 Black Women ~ ~ Black Men 70 _ ~ White Women ~ white Men 1 1970 1 980 1940 1 950 1960 1970 1980 YEAR Sources: Data Mom decennial censuses and Current Population Surveys.
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From page 337... ...
For example, there is significant variation in dropout rates from place to place. More important, there is little standardization of concepts or methods for the measurement of high school "dropout" or even of high school completion.
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From page 338... ...
Little notice was taken of the decline until 7 years after it had begun; public interest increased in the wake of visible declines in black enrollment on the campuses of major universities and of occasional incidents of racial conflict. Black college entry declined during a period of unprecedented growth in the chances of white high school graduates to attend college (see Figure 7-5)
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From page 339... ...
In 1986, the latest year for which national data are available, 36.5 percent of black high school graduates entered college in the fall after high school graduation. In comparison, for 1973-1984, the college entry rate of whites rose almost continuously from about 48 percent to 57 percent.
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Of course, the selectivity of high school graduation itself deserves to be considered as a possible source of decline in college entry. Rates of high school completion did increase among blacks during the 1970s and 1980s.
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. Turning to economic status, the lower incomes of black families explain part of the black-white gap in college entry.
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The available evidence about changes in levels of academic achievement among black youth in the 1970s and 1980s suggests that their achievement levels are on the increase, absolutely and relative to those of whites. Thus, although black students continue to perform less well on tests than white students, it is unlikely that changes in academic achievement among blacks could explain either the trend in black college enrollment or the difference in trend between blacks and whites.
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" Why are black students less willing than white students to borrow funds to support their college attendance? In a purely economic analysis, a student's willingness to borrow will be affected by the economic return to his or her investment.
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Changes in the attractiveness of military service is another proposed explanation of the decline in black college entry relative to that of whites. Plans and aspirations to enter military service after high school graduation have increased among black high school seniors of both sexes (see Figure 7-7~.
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, indicating a shift by black students away from programs leading to graduate school and toward fields that promise more direct entry to the labor market. Despite the increasing enrollment of blacks in predominantly white colleges 345
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First, achievement test performance is but one type of criterion of student success and school performance. Other outcomes of schooling are arguably as important as test achievement, such as the development of higher order reasoning ability, effective interpersonal and social skills, and the acquisition of basic cultural values and orientations.
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From page 347... ...
In addition, the lack of emphasis on credentials makes it possible to hire teachers and aides who do not have college degrees and so are paid much lower salaries than public school teachers. There is a strong emphasis on using parents at Head Start centers, as well as a more general ethic of neighborhood participation fostered by parental involvement in policy making.
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Third, among the youngest age group and birth cohort, there is evidence of a possible decline in black performance relative to that of whites; this trend, in particular, bears close scrutiny as more recent data become available. Improvements in Black Achievement Scores NAEP assessments of reading, math, and science performance have been conducted for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds since 1969-1970 and as recently as 1985-1986.
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From page 349... ...
born between 1954 and 1963, but declined to 10-13 percent for cohorts born between 1964 and 1974. These improvements in test performance occurred at all ability levels.
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The contributions of school desegregation and compensatory education programs are inferred on the basis of two observations. First, black students born in 1964 or later show the most striking improvements in achievement.
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Several other factors known to contribute to mathematics achievement also differ between black and white students, including verbal skills, socioeconomic status, and mathematics achievement prior to high school. But even after accounting for the effects of these other variables, patterns of course enrollment still affect mathematics achievement.
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From page 352... ...
concludes that there are large black-white gaps in performance on average, especially at medium and higher levels of proficiency. Perhaps most telling, as the report emphasizes (Kirsch and Jungeblut, 1986:5~: "These differences appear at each level of education reported." The differences are thus not entirely the result of lower educational attainment among blacks, although disparities in family socioeconomic background and level of attainment are a component of these differences.
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From page 353... ...
A prose score of 200 is roughly equivalent to being able to identify a single piece of information from a moderate-length sports article; a similar documents score is roughly an ability to select and match store coupons on the documents scale; and for the quantitative scale the score is roughly equivalent to being able to add simple checkbook entries. At this level, there is about a 12 percent difference between blacks and whites.
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SCHOOL FACTORS IN ATTAINMENT AND ACHIEVEMENT THE EFFECTS OF SCHOOLS AND BETWEEN-SCHOOL DIFFERENCES What the schools can do to affect student achievement outcomes has been a source of controversy since the Coleman-Campbell report (1966~. That study reported two major unexpected findings: despite extensive segregation, inequality in the measured resources and facilities available to students of different races within regions was small; and aggregate school resources had trivial effects on achievement scores after students' family backgrounds and schools' student body compositions were taken into account.
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From page 355... ...
First, there do not appear to be substantial differences in achievement that are traceable to between-school differences in such factors as facilities, teacher qualifications, and class size. However, there do appear to be considerable differences in the socioeconomic status, background, and school performance of black and white teachers (see below)
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From page 356... ...
Teacher Expectatums, Characteristics, and Behavior Tracking and teacher expectations are two of the main concerns of educators who argue that schools can impede minority achievement. Low teacher expectations in combination with practices, such as ability grouping and tracking, frequently sort black students into a "hidden curriculum" (Clark, 1963; Leacock, 1970; Rist, 1970~.
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From page 357... ...
, that it is much easier to recognize effective teachers than it is to predict their behaviors on the basis of objective indicators. Even so, however, it may be possible to assign such teachers to early grade levels and to classrooms that have large proportions of students with low socioeconomic status so that their positive influences on students at this critical stage may have a cumulative effect on their subsequent performance.
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Effective schools research started explicitly (Klitgaard and Hall, 1974; Weber, 1971) as a critique of the assertion that family factors were more important than school factors for the achievement of minority and low-income children.
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From page 359... ...
It is the first two of these that have been stressed in the effective schools literature. Among the most important attributes of the culture of effective schools are a belief among school administrators and teachers that all students, regardless of race or social class background, can achieve to some high minimum level of competence and a strong school leader, usually a principal, who continually reinforces the idea that the schools' highest priority is academic achievement.
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From page 360... ...
The research base that has led to the identification of the characteristics of effective schools has some weaknesses (Brophy and Good, 1986; Purkey and Smith, 1983~: use of small samples; ignoring of important confounding factors in identifying outlier schools; reliance on schoolwide averages that may mask poor performance among particular groups of students; and a frequent use of subjective criteria in designating "effective schools." The students in schools designated as effective in some studies still are not performing as well as students in middle-class suburban schools. Ethnographic and longitudinal studies also suggest that there are important differences between low-income effective schools and effective schools servingmiddle-class students.
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From page 361... ...
Intervention strategies that attempt to accomplish many of the recommendations of the effective schools approach have been tried. The Baldwin-King schools project in New Haven, Connecticut, is an exemplar of a promising strategy that has produced sustained improvement in the achievement and interpersonal social skills of black students (Comer, 1980, 1984~.
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From page 362... ...
reported on a 1977 reading communications test in Florida: 3 percent of white students but 24 percent of black students failed. The failure rates were higher for both races on a mathematics test, but the black-white gap was even larger: approximately 20 percent for whites and approximately 75 percent for blacks.
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However, if testing and minimum performance standards policies continue, then steps toward accelerated programs of this kind seem necessary if the pattern of lower black performance is to be improved. Teacher testing is also on the rise.
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found black students to be ambivalent about their status. The students tended to report lukewarm relationships with white students, faculty, and staff, and they did not feel strongly engaged with campus activities.
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It is well known that children from higher socioeconomic status backgrounds are more likely than those from low socioeconomic status backgrounds to score high on achievement tests, to receive persistent encouragement from adults, and to form high educational aspirations. They are also more likely to complete college and pursue advanced or professional degrees.
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From page 366... ...
For example, we report below that differences in socioeconomic status explain the entire black-white difference in dropout rates and account for at least 20 percent of the difference in achievement test performance. The more significant point, however, is that black-white differences in school performance are likely to persist so long as differences in the socioeconomic status of the two groups remain.
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From page 367... ...
The Educational Attainment Process A large number of studies have concluded that the process of educational attainment differs for blacks and whites.3 Variables used to explain educational outcomes were routinely found to be less powerful in accounting for the educational attainment of blacks than that for whites. Moreover, socioeconomic status exerted less powerful effects at each stage of the attainment process for blacks.
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From page 368... ...
may account for much of the observed group differences in achievement. One major result of these analyses was that there were minor, but statistically discernible, group differences in the impact of socioeconomic status on high school dropout rates, on senior-year academic achievement, and on senior-year levels of aspirations.
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This climate had adverse consequences for parental guidance and monitoring of children and for a child's performance in school. Thus, socioeconomic status does affect chid-rearing behaviors that, in turn, have consequences for cognitive development and school performance.
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ALt ~o adopting rammes were o~ ~,~ socioeconomic status, although the white adoptive families were slightly higher. The results showed that transracially adopted black children performed better on the VVISC-IQ test than black children adopted by black families.
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As formulated by Ogbu (1978) , this perspective contends that as a result of racial stratification there is often sharp discontinuity between the home and community experiences of black students and the middle-class values, standards, and expectations of the schools.
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From page 372... ...
suggested that black students confront a triple quandary that involves the need to simultaneously master mainstream American culture, black American culture, and the critical perspective of a low-status minority. When the mainstream culture in the schools is experienced as alien and hostile, many black children attempt to assert the value and integrity of the experiences of their homes and communities by rejecting the standards of the schools.
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Future research would do well to focus on whether and to what extent the educational aspirations and plans of black students are developed and expressed with greater ambivalence or uncertainty compared with those of whites. SCHOOL DESEGREGATION AN D ACADEMIC ACH I EVEMENT We reported above that school desegregation modestly improves the aca demic performance of black pupils and has no substantial effect on white pupils' academic achievement.
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From page 374... ...
of the relationship between desegregation and achievement test scores dealt with 323 samples from 93 ~ , 1 1 1 _ 1_ ~ studies in 67 cities. Gains tor black students on stanuara~zea acmevemen~ test scores (or grade equivalents)
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Second, black faculty members often face greater service demands than whites, for counseling black students, working on professional groups and activities, and serving on various departmental and university committees. Such demands on the time of black faculty can reduce the time available for work on research and teaching.
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From page 376... ...
Thus, black faculty were more likely than whites in the matched sample to report that administrative and student counseling work reduced their time for research and teaching, and that the institution did not provide enough formal rewards for the service activities they were performing. This poses a dilemma for many black faculty because they were often recruited with the idea that they would perform a larger service role, or were expected to do so, yet ultimately few rewards accrued to such activities.
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Because of the economic differences between blacks and whites, programs designed for poor children were in some part programs for black children. However, federal intervention in state and local school systems never was great enough to alter decisively the administration of those systems.
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compounds the negative effects of low socioeconomic status on black attainment and achievement levels. Thus, although substantial progress has been made toward the provision of educational resources to blacks, there remain persistent and large gaps in 378
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This segregation has several consequences for students: although school desegregation does not substantially affect the academic performance of white students, it modestly improves black performance (particularly reading) ; when several key conditions are met, intergroup attitudes and relations improve after schools are desegregated; and desegregation is most likely to reduce racial isolation as well as to improve academic and social outcomes for blacks when it is part of a comprehensive and rapid program of change.
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From page 380... ...
Blau, Zena S 1981 Black Children-White Children: Social Competence, Socialization and Social Structure.
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1983 Family and School Achievement: Why Poor Black Children Succeed or Fail. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Ogbu 1986 Black students' school success: coping with the burden of 'acting white.' Urloan Re~v 18(3)
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:257-268. Gibbs, Jewell Taylor 1973 Black students/white university: different expectations.
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Davenport 1984 Monitoring the mathematics achievement of black students.
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Bancroft 1985 Growing use of the effective schools model of school improvement. Educational Leadership (May)
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New York: Academic Press. 1986 Family socialization and IQ test performance of traditionally and transracially adopted black children.
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From page 387... ...
Scott-Jones, Diane 1987a Black Families and the Education of Black Children: Current Issues. Paper prepared for the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, National Research Council, Washington, D.C.
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From page 388... ...
Smith, Donald H 1981 Social and academic environments of black students on white campuses.
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From page 389... ...
Willie, Charles V., and Donald Cunnigen 1981 Black students in higher education: a review of studies, 1965-1980. Annual Review of Sociology 7:177-198.
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