America Becoming Racial Trends and Their Consequences: Volume I (2001) / Chapter Skim
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12. Test Score Trends Along Racial Lines, 1971 to 1996: Popular Culture and Community Academic Standards
12. Test Score Trends Along Racial Lines, 1971 to 1996: Popular Culture and Community Academic Standards
Pages 348-390
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From page 348... ...
A major reason is that Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and some sub-groups among Asians have lower test scores than Whites. This complicates efforts to achieve racial and ethnic balance in selective institutions.
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From page 349... ...
Relying heavily on data from NAEP, this chapter summarizes and offers tentative explanations for trends in reading and math scores among Black, Hispanic, and White children from the early 1970s through 1996. Neither American Indians and Alaska Natives nor Asians and Pacific Islanders was separately identified in NAEP during the period examined here and, therefore, neither of these groups is addressed.
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From page 350... ...
of the mean scores are shown in parentheses on the tables. Trends for Nine-Year-Olds Reading scores for nine-year-olds rose mostly during the 1970s, but the increase in math scores occurred mostly in the mid-to-late 1980s.
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Estimated benefits of small classes were larger for Black than for White students and larger in inner-city schools. Second, elementary pupil-to-teacher ratios fell nationally by roughly 25 percent between 1970 and 1990 (National Center for Education Statistics, 1996b)
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100.0 91.9 77.4 71.6 82.8 91.9 101.4 91.6 n.a. 100.0 91.7 91.7 70.8 81.4 77.3 94.7 76.1 Trends in Learning After Age Nine The fact that Black and Hispanic children reach the age of nine with fewer math and reading skills on average than Whites is mostly because Black and Hispanic children begin school with fewer skills.
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Gaps in Math Scores White-Black Gap 17- 13year-olds year-olds White-Hispanic Gap 9 17year-olds year-olds 13- 9 year-olds year-olds 1973 1978 1982 1986 1990 1992 1994 1996 1973 1978 1982 1986 1990 1992 1994 1996 40.0 37.5 31.9 28.9 21.0 26.1 26.8 27.0 46.0 42.0 32.0 24.4 27.2 28.7 29.3 29.1 Percentage of 1973 Gap Remaining 35.0 31.7 29.1 25.3 26.8 27.1 24.7 25.3 100.0 93.8 79.7 72.2 52.5 65.2 67.0 67.5 33.0 29.6 27.0 24.4 26.0 19.7 21.5 21.4 35.0 33.6 20.0 19.3 21.7 19.6 24.8 25.5 Percentage of 1973 Gap Remaining 23.0 21.2 20.0 21.5 21.4 23.2 26.9 22.2 100.0 91.3 69.6 53.0 59.1 62.4 63.7 63.3 100.0 90.6 83.1 72.3 76.6 77.4 70.6 72.3 100.0 89.7 81.8 73.9 78.8 59.7 65.2 64.8 100.0 96.0 57.1 55.1 62.0 56.0 70.9 72.9 100.0 92.2 87.0 93.5 93.0 100.9 117.0 96.5 SOURCE: National Assessment of Educational Progress (1996~. NAEP data for the 1970s and 1980s tell a different story.
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From page 356... ...
The first two of these three reasons are probably greater problems for data for Hispanic students than for Blacks or Whites because the Hispanic dropout rate is higher, as is the Hispanic immigration rate. (The interval properties I assume below for comparing test score gains are probably only appropriate for comparing intervals where the average scores are very similar.
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From page 357... ...
reading and (B) math scores for Black 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds (Metric = S.D.'s below 17-year-old Whites' 1996 mean)
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From page 358... ...
reading and (D) math scores for Hispanic 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds (Metric = S.D.'s below 17-year-old Whites' 1996 mean)
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From page 359... ...
math scores for White 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds (Metric = S.D.'s below 17-year-old Whites' 1996 mean)
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From page 360... ...
that the 1975 birth cohort of Black youth gained as 13- and 17-year-olds, in 1988 and 1992, is essentially the same as the 0.45 SD (17.7 points) that another cohort achieved in 1971 and 1975.
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Most studies that consider the question find that teachers' test scores are statistically significant predictors of their
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From page 365... ...
Conversely, from 1990 through 1994, NAEP math scores fell by 3 points for Blacks, but rose by 3 points for Whites and 7 points for Hispanics. Using the SE of the average NAEP scores (shown in parentheses in Table 12-1B)
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From page 366... ...
Trends in reading scores are not as similar among Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics, as are trends for math scores. Trends for Black 17-year-olds in particular, present a real puzzle.
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From page 368... ...
Clearly, their disengagement from academic endeavors was not total; gains in math scores seem less affected, and there were minimal gains in reading. Still, it seems that something important was different; popular culture is a prime suspect.
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From page 369... ...
Hence, if a change in television habits is part of the story for test scores, it has to be a change in what youth watched, not how long they sat in front of the television. Table 12-6 shows that Black 17-year-olds devoted somewhat more time to homework in 1988, when their reading scores peaked, than in 1992, when their scores were lowest.
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SOURCE: Unpublished NAEP data provided to the author by the Educational Testing Service.
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256 254 252 250 248 FIGURE 12-3 Trends in NAEP reading scores and reading for pleasure among Black 17-year-olds, 1984 to 1996. SOURCE: Educational Testing Service, unpublished data.
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From page 373... ...
Indeed, it has been noted that "hip hop culture is one of the few cultural movements that has been shaped and, to a large extent, controlled by young Black males" (Nelson, 1991, cited in McLaurin, 1995~. Drugs, Panes, and activities associated with the marketing and consumption of crack cocaine, admittedly relevant to a minority of Black youth, are a factor in the effect of this popularized form of expression.
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From page 374... ...
If watching rap videos and listening to rap music promote cynicism about societal fairness, and about the prospects of people who work hard experiencing success, then it might also detract from academic engagement and performance. Mickelson (1990)
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From page 375... ...
The degree to which Black youth use rap music as a source of information or insight is unclear. Similarly, my suggestion here that the rise of rap music may help account for the drop in leisure reading and reading scores for Black and Hispanic students should be regarded as tentative until more evidence is found to support it.
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From page 376... ...
At the same time, Cook and Ludwig agree that their work has no bearing on the question of whether fear of acting White prevents Black students from working harder than Whites, which might be required to narrow the Black-White achievement gap. For a much more detailed and subtle discussion of these and related issues, see Ferguson (forthcoming)
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From page 377... ...
Does his apparent ambivalence reflect a concern about being able to do well in the honors courses, a concern about acting White and selling out, or both? Do White students face such pressures equally?
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From page 378... ...
The few studies that take students' past grades and test scores into account find that teachers have the same expectations on average for Black and White students who have performed equally in the past. Hence, by this notion of expectations conditional on past performance, teachers are not racially biased, even though they expect less of Blacks, because Blacks' past performance predicts their lower future performance.
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From page 379... ...
Black or Hispanic students' latent potentials by more than they underestimate Whites'. Because potential is not apparent until it shows itself, there is no way of proving or calibrating whether bias has a role here.
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From page 380... ...
A nationally representative survey of high school students conducted in 1996, however, indicates that neither Black, Hispanic, nor White students feel that standards are high enough (Public Agenda, 1997~. The survey covered 1,000 randomly selected high school students, plus another 1,120 over-sample interviews for Blacks, Hispanics, private high school students, middle school students, and students from two metropolitan areas.
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From page 381... ...
Items related to "doing a bad job" included not emphasizing basics such as reading, writing, and math; passing students to the next grade when they should be held back; and allowing students to get away with being late to class and not doing their work. More Black than Hispanic students and more Hispanic than White students report these to be problems.
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From page 382... ...
High School Students Private Whites Blacks Hispanics School Having more good teachers 60 Getting your class work checked and redoing it until it's right Kicking constant troublemakers out of class so teachers can concentrate on the kids who want to learn Knowing that more companies in your area are using high school transcripts to decide who to hire Knowing you'll get something you want from your parents if you do well 75 69 74 58 74 69 61 50 66 58 50 48 62 49 46 27 43 44 27 SOURCE: Public Agenda (1997, Table 5~. Reprinted with permission from Public Agenda, New York.
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From page 383... ...
High School Students Private Whites Blacks Hispanics School A teacher who tries to make lessons fun and interesting 79/25 76/25 78/23 84/39 A teacher who is enthusiastic and exited about the subject they teach A teacher who knows a lot about the subject they teach A teacher who treats students with respect A teacher who gives students a lot of individual help with their work A teacher who uses hands-on projects and class discussion A teacher who explains lessons very carefully A teacher who challenges students to constantly do better and learn more A teacher who personally cares about his students as people 71/29 71/28 72/32 71/32 70/47 74/49 72/47 77/63 68/42 75/37 67/33 76/31 68/23 67/31 64/33 72/38 68/50 73/63 69/31 78/51 68/19 70/33 72/35 71/48 63/33 79/42 69/36 74/51 62/30 68/31 66/31 71/58 A teacher who knows how to handle disruptive students 45/28 52/35 44/35 52/44 SOURCE: Public Agenda (1997, Table 11~. Reprinted with permission from Public Agenda, New York.
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From page 384... ...
Another possibility is that Black and Hispanic students have lower threshold standards than Whites do for judging teachers, so that Blacks would rate any given teacher performance higher than Whites would. If this latter interpretation is closer to correct, then it is even more a problem that a larger percentage of Black and Hispanic than White students agree that "too many teachers are doing a bad job." The correct interpretation is impossible to glean from these data, but the issues are important, and the Public Agenda survey has at least begun to inform the discussion.
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From page 385... ...
If we care about equality of results, then we must face the fact that catching up requires running faster than the competition: the only way for Black and Hispanic students in a given birth cohort to narrow the gap with Whites during the school years is for them to learn more than Whites do. Although NAEP cannot measure changes in proficiency between school entry and age nine, data from NAEP suggest that Black and Hispanic children often have learned more than Whites after age nine, but not for all time periods, and not enough to come even close to closing the test-score gap.
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From page 386... ...
math scores by racial/ethnic background (three-year moving averages)
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From page 387... ...
1996 Rap music, black men, and the police. In Mediated Messages and African American Culture: Contemporary Issues, V
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1998b Can schools narrow the black-white test score gap? In The Black-White Test Score Gap, C
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From page 389... ...
Gatto 1995 Violent attitudes and deferred academic aspirations: Deleterious effects of exposure to rap music. Basic and Applied Social Psychology 16~1,2~:2741.
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From page 390... ...
Ralph 1998a Does the black-white test-score gap widen after children enter school? In The Black-White Test Score Gap, C
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