Black-White Test Score Gap [Paperback]

Christopher Jencks (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815746091 | ISBN-13: 978-0815746096 | Publication Date: August 25, 1998

The test score gap between blacks and whites - on vocabulary, reading, and math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence - is large enough to have far-reaching social and economic consequences. In their introduction to this book, Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips argue that eliminating the disparity would dramatically reduce economic and educational inequality between blacks and whites. Indeed, they think that closing the gap would do more to promote racial equality than any other strategy now under serious discussion. The book offers a comprehensive look at the factors that contribute to the test score gap and discusses options for substantially reducing it. Although significant attempts have been made over the past three decades to shrink the test score gap, including increased funding for predominantly black schools, desegregation of southern schools, and programs to alleviate poverty, the median black American still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests. The book brings together recent evidence on some of the most controversial and puzzling aspects of the test score debate, including the role of test bias, heredity, and family background. It also looks at how and why the gap has changed over the past generation, reviews the educational, psychological, and cultural explanations for the gap, and analyzes its educational and economic consequences. The authors demonstrate that traditional explanations account for only a small part of the black-white test score gap. They argue that this is partly because traditional explanations have put too much emphasis on racial disparities in economic resources, both in homes and in schools, and on demographic factors like family structure. They say that successful theories will put more emphasis on psychological and cultural factors, such as the way black and white parents teach their children to deal with things they do not know or understand, and the way black and white children respond to the same classroom experiences. Finally, they call for large-scale experiments to determine the effects of schools' racial mix, class size, ability grouping, and other policies. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Claude Steele, Ronald Ferguson, William G. Bowen, Philip Cook, and William Julius Wilson. Christopher Jencks is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the author of The Homeless (Harvard, 1994) and Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Harperperennial, 1993), and the coeditor of The Urban Underclass (Brookings, 1991). Meredith Phillips is assistant professor of policy studies at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ever since affirmative action was adopted as a wide-ranging policy in education and employment, controversy has surrounded it. Opinions have flown thick and fast, but there has been little hard evidence to support either side. The prosaically named Black-White Test Score Gap, a collection of essays on the subject, attempts to rectify this situation. As one authority after another weighs in, it becomes increasingly clear that the causes of African Americans' inferior scores on standardized tests have less to do with nature and everything to do with nurture (or lack of it). Not surprisingly, conditions such as poverty and lack of opportunity at the beginning of a child's life seems to have terribly detrimental effects on test scores and thus the chance to go to school or find a well-paying job later on. Editors Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips have done a good job of selecting both the topics and the contributors for this often contentious, always fascinating study of affirmative action.

Review

...the bulk of the material in this book leaves the reader with the sense that the causes are deep and difficult to overcome. -- The New York Times Book Review, Alan Wolfe

Product Details

• Paperback: 536 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press (August 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815746091
• ISBN-13: 978-0815746096
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Most objective book on the topic, still room for a classic, though, December 24, 2005

By 

souldrummer (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Black-White Test Score Gap (Paperback)

This book could have been a classic. Following "The Bell Curve", a provocative mid-90s book that argued for underlying genetic causes to black-white achievement gaps, a rigorous, articulate rebuttal was necessary to show that gaps do exist, but there are causes beyond genetics that can be addressed to reduce inequality. "Black White Test Score Gap" is certainly a rigorous rebuttal, but this book is really, really hard to understand unless you have completed a quality statistics course. This book is clearly written for a purely academic audience, and I struggled with it, despite having a strong nonstatistics math background and a hunger for reading social science books such as William Julius Wilson's "The Declining Significance of Race".

Many of the conclusions are pertinent and do shed light on the subject, however. The article that argued *against* the disadvantages of acting white for black students was very insightful and weakened my support for the conventional wisdom that black students do not achieve largely due to peer pressure. The article comparing black students and white students performance at highly selective colleges rang true with my experiences as a black, Ivy league college student. An article focusing on teacher's expectations confused me, but it did help me appreciate the magnitude of the problem and that ultimately, all of the numbers in this book must be complemented by risky narrative research as well. We can perform regression analysis forever and identify that high teacher expectations and teachers with high test scores yield better student performance. But if we lack the psychological will to fight and the human stories to inspire, much of the accurate research in this book will be in vain.

One essay that I strongly disagree with is the Claude Steele essay documenting "stereotype threat". For me, this study is a boutique research project. A very small sample of Stanford students does not convince me that stereotype threat, a theory that black students perform worse when they are informed that a test assesses their intelligence, is a major problems for the majority of black high achievers. Several authors in this book herald this study as a breakthrough in potentially addressing the gap. Short of training teachers to be psychologists and motivational speakers, I do not see how we can address this problem if it is a large cause for the black-white test score gap. Even worse, I challenge Steele to replicate his findings amongst a more representative sample of black high achievers, such as those who attend some east coast scores, those at historically black colleges and universities, and those who receive full scholarships at less selective and state colleges. The high achieving black student is not the high achieving white student, I agree. But I don't think that Steele is helping issues with putting this research in this book.

This book is still helpful for those with a strong research background and understanding of the subject. It should be required reading for any educational professional Masters level and above who works with black students. For the layman, however, there are better books out there perhaps, or at least room for a book that translates the conclusions of "The Black White Test Score Gap" into more articulate, clearer language and analysis.

3 stars

--SD

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Almost Solid Meta-Analysis of a Persistent but Not-So Perplexing Educational Problem, November 29, 2005

By 

Rick (Hong Kong, China) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black-White Test Score Gap (Paperback)

The editors of this collection of carefully worded journal articles have brought the public (and often less informed) debate about racial disparity in test score results back to the academic arena at a critical juncture. As another reviewer noted, the quantitative analysis can and does indeed distract from the thrust of the arguments being put forward, but not overly so unless one is a lay reader uninitiated in this lingering debate. If you have grown weary of ideologically-charged elements in this debate, you will welcome this collection. The editors have included articles that address with varying degrees of success the many issues and causes which come to the fore when the topic of the test score gap is broached. My only criticism is that more should have been offered by way of a contrasting viewpoint about how the current phenomenon of the decline (and in many instances) disintegration of the nuclear black family has exacerbated this racial learning gap. Concern for a lack of social and economic capital is legitimate fodder for discussion but one should not ignore the elephant in the parlor--the fact that 7 in 10 black children are now born out of wedlock.

Cook and Ludwig's article on the burdens of acting white should be well noted as it gets at the most overlooked source of the problem. Few articles over the past two decades have appeared in either the academic or popular press about this pernicious trend in the black community.

Steele and Aronson's social psychological study at Stanford University in the early 1990s that led to their promulgation of a stereotype threat deserves special attention if only because the study has not been replicated on a comparable or larger scale. Yet the existence of such a threat is now taken as a given by many eager to assign blame beyond the home. Yet few who embrace this factor will publicly admit that the very affirmative action policies, for instance, that include "National Black Achiever" categories for PSAT test takers continually remind black high school juniors that they have not and do not need to achieve at the same level to receive some semblance of national academic recognition. Low expectations emanate as much if not more from political decisions beyond the school door as behind it.

It is this last point that the reader should most bear in mind as he or she reads these articles. A previous reviewer from Cleveland and a college minority affairs officer would have us believe that most white teachers in the inner-city are biased in their regard for the academic potential of their black students and are themselves relatively incompetent. As one who taught for a decade in the inner-city at a predominantly black SWS (school-within-a-school) high school (and taught some of the participants in the Steele-Aronson study) and had occasion to visit dozens of schools with similar demographics, I must take issue with his point. Indeed, as this volume neglects to address, perhaps inadvertently, many of the most indifferent teachers are themselves black and, to the contrary, many if not most of their white colleagues are anything but complacent. In magnet (re: college preparatory) inner-city schools, in particular, the bulk of the teaching staff is well-trained in addition to being highly motivated.

So after reading this much needed compendium, one would do well to read John McWhorter's "Losing the Race" (he is a young black linguist at Berkeley) for an eloquent appraisal of the victimhood mindset that besets many would-be civic leaders in the black community nowadays--a mindset also overlooked in this otherwise solid collection.

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and Reflective Essays on the Test Score Gap, February 8, 2001

By 

Joseph T. Williams (Cleveland , Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black-White Test Score Gap (Paperback)

I work in the minority affairs at a major univerity. One of the questions I often get from majority and minority students and faculty is, "why are the scores--on average--so much lower for minority students than other students". Sometimes the implied message is, are the Black students dumber? The Black-White Test Scoe Gap is the best source I know for answering this and questions without getting defensive. The book makes plain that their is not just one "answer", but many theories. I have always thought a big chunk of the problem had to do with so many lower middle class white teachers who had low expectations for Black children. Interestingly, one of the writers agrees that the gap has something to do with the teachers, but notes a different problem: teachers (regardless of race)in urban areas tend to have low standardized test scores themselves and therefore may find it difficult to improved the scores of their students. I highly recommend this book.