The Black-White Test Gap

Printed on: Thu, Aug 30, 2007

Parents can impact test scores

By Kelvin Wade

Why do black and Latino test scores lag behind those of whites? This year's California Exit Exam held both good news and bad. The good news was that 93 percent of seniors passed the exam with the greatest strides being made by blacks and Latinos. The bad news is their scores still lag behind whites. The same is true in the Standardized Testing and Reporting program (STAR).

But this year, the data in the STAR tests shows that poverty is not a factor in the low scores.

Low-income whites scored the same or better than blacks and Latinos who are not poor. As a black man it's frustrating to see this year after year. How do we explain it?

Is it that old trusty crutch, racism?

It was reported earlier this month that a black Fairfield High student and his mother filed a federal lawsuit against the student's teacher, the high school, the school district, principal and superintendent, partly blaming the student's failure to pass the exit exam on racism.

Now, I don't know the specifics of the case but considering teachers are routinely accused of teaching to the test and there have been multiple reports of teachers caught helping their students cheat on standardized testing across the country, it's hard to see why someone would try to hold back any student in this climate.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell recently blamed "systemic inequities." He said the minority students hadn't had the same quality of schools and teachers and had not been held to the same academic expectations.

Maybe that explains some of it. But we need better answers.

I think the answer may lie in studies conducted in 2004 by Penn State researcher Dr. George Farkas. In the American Sociological Association Contexts article "The Black-White Test Score Gap." Farkas shoots down genetic theory by showing that the white-black achievement gap closed by some 40 percent between 1970 and 1990. Farkas found that greater parental verbal interaction with their preschool children explains much of the test score differences between social classes and races. Students who score well have parents who, not only have spoken more words to their children by age three, but have used a wider vocabulary in interacting with their children.

Could it be as simple as blacks and Latinos not having as extensive a vocabulary as their white peers? Do they just not understand the questions they're being asked?

Better schools, better teachers, smaller classes are part of the solution. But the other part is how we prepare our youngsters before they ever hit preschool. And with out-of-wedlock black births at 70 percent and 50 percent among Hispanics compared to a fifth for whites, that's got to play a role.

And if the parents are uneducated with limited vocabularies, low expectations and stunted parenting skills, is it no wonder the achievement gap persists? Peace.
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NOTES ON THE COLUMN: It's a weighty topic that cannot be resolved in 600 words. You're asking what topic can be resolved in 600 words? Lots. O.J. did it. Bush is an idiot. Moe, Larry and Curly are the real Three Stooges. See? But this topic demands closer attention and ongoing study.

It's always been troubling to me that this gap exists and I've wanted to get to the bottom of it. I've seen no evidence that the gap exists in my family and I've wanted to know why that is. My family was fortunate. Our parents were born in rural East Texas. Black families who stayed there didn't see much academic or economic advancement. We had a couple of things going for us. Our dad was in the Navy which sent him around the world (Britain, Greece, Italy, South Africa, the Philippines, Japan, Korea and other places). Once in the Navy our father could take classes and further his education. He even taught a class on race relations. Our mother was Valedictorian of her class and a whiz in English. This paid off for my brothers as she stressed spelling, reading and vocabulary with us. She used flash cards to work with us before we entered kindergarten. They took us to the library all the time. We all have a love of reading to this day. But I contrast our upbringing with my cousins' who still live in East Texas. While they're decent people, they're not brain surgeons. Both Tony and I were accepted into the Gifted and Talented Programs in grade school.

Dr. Farkas' proposition that there is too little verbal interaction in black homes doesn't surprise me. Especially when you look at the fact that 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. There's one less parent there from the get go to provide that interaction. And since we already know that blacks as a group are less educated than their white peers as far as degrees and test results, just how much of a positive influence can those parents be? And is there even an emphasis on that in those homes?

If we're talking about the bottom third of blacks on the socio-economic rung, we're talking about people who's biggest concern is sheer survival. That's survival in the form of making ends meet and literally the survival of black children in the inner city. It's hard to see that families in those environments would be stressing vocabulary and education and working with the kids to achieve that. It, of course, does happen but not nearly in large enough numbers.

There is something to the fact that education isn't as valued among young blacks as making money. For some reason, there's a disconnect. There's a lot of talk in popular black culture about 'gettin' paid', 'making that cheddah'...But for some reason, we divorce education from the equation. It's cliche' but true that too often, sports and music seem like the paths to prosperity for young blacks. There are 1696 players in the NFL. There are 450 players in the NBA. 1200 in Major League Baseball. There are approximately 40 million blacks in the U.S. About a third of that number are under 18. That's like 13.2 million. Let's say half of them are boys. Let's say a quarter of those boys want to be professional athletes. That's 1.6 million people hoping to make it onto those rosters. And there's actually less slots than that because those leagues aren't 100% black. The NFL is 65%, NBA is 80% and baseball is only 8.4%. So we're talking about 1.6 million black men dreaming of winning one of 1562 positions. And really, it could be double that number of black men. 3.2 million hoping to make it.

Or they want to make it in the music biz. That's a saturated market. CDs aren't selling. Rap sales are plummeting. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making it out of one's circumstances through art or sports. But we need to show young blacks the power of education.

There's two things here that will help raise black test scores and raise the socio-economic status of blacks in general. Marriage and education. Marriage and education. Marriage and education.

For one, when you're married with children, you have a stake in society. You have something you want to take care of. You're a part of something. You're going to be more likely to have a job if you're married because you have obligations. And two educated people together raising children with a focus on education? That's powerful shit.

It was brutal and harsh when Bill Cosby gave his 2004 speech to the NAACP at the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education but it was real:

We’ve got to take the neighborhood back. We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra.” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with, “Why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not; they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.

Proper English is something that must be stressed. Many blacks are scoring almost as poorly as though who have English as a second language. And it's because to some blacks, proper English is almost a second language. To too many blacks, it's full of words, phrases and expressions that they're unfamiliar with. And when they encounter that language and words on a test, it's not surprising they get the answers wrong. You can't get the answers right if you don't understand what the question is.

So many pathologies in the black community can be remedied by putting black families back together.

I don't discount the legacy of racism, discrimination and Jim Crow. If you have a people who were systematically denied good schools, good teachers and higher education for generations, then you don't have a legacy of respect for education to hand down. You pass down pathology. So I can understand that.

But here in 2007, there are opportunities to be had. And to right this ship, I think it means putting the black family together and stressing education as the keys to success. Education is what's going to enable you to 'get paid.' It's the missing ingredient. I think knowing the stakes, it behooves black parents to work twice as hard with their youngsters. Leap Pad...Sesame Street...libraries.. flash cards...reading...interacting. We have to get the kids prepared.

No, I haven't solved this problem but I hope I've made a contribution.