August 17, 2011
Analyses of today’s release of ACT test results focus, as such discussions often do, on the disturbing persistence of large racial achievement gaps. As reported in places like The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed, 41% of Asian-American students scored high enough to be deemed “college ready” in English, reading, math, and science, compared with 31% of whites, 15% of Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, 11% of American Indians/Alaskan Natives, 11% of Hispanic/Latino students, and 4% of black students. Readers will take away the message that Asian students were 10 times as likely to pass all subject areas as black students.
I have two concerns about the reporting of these data by the ACT and news organizations.
First, any discussion of the racial achievement gap should be accompanied by some discussion of the racial opportunity gap. Telling readers that Asians and whites are far more likely to pass tests than Latinos and blacks, without talking about the quality of schools or teachers or the safety of neighborhoods, paints an incomplete picture and can perpetuate pernicious stereotypes.
Second, these data and the accompanying discussions ignore the class gap in both achievement and opportunity, which research finds is even greater than the racial and ethnic gaps.
It is true that if one examines income alone, race seems to predominate in explaining test scores because results often show that middle-class black students perform worse on standardized tests than low-income whites and Asians.
But income is a poor indicator of socioeconomic status. When researchers consider a wide array of economic factors—such as family income, parents’ education levels and occupation, school and neighborhood socioeconomic status, and wealth/net worth—the comparative importance of race diminishes considerably.
Controlling for a variety of socioeconomic factors, Georgetown University researchers Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl found the predicted SAT score of blacks was 56 points lower than whites. By contrast, being highly disadvantaged by socioeconomic status predicted an SAT score 399 points lower than that of the most socioeconomically advantaged students. In other words, the disadvantages of class outweighed the disadvantages of race by 7:1.
It is common in academia to argue that in America, we don’t like to talk about race, but the presentation of ACT results is just one example of how false that claim often is. As Walter Benn Michaels has noted, “in fact, we love to talk about race,” especially in the university.
But talking incessantly about race, and using race as a proxy for larger class issues, can perpetuate false stereotypes about racial and ethnic groups. As Stephen Carter has asked, “Is it a good thing, is it a safe thing, to encourage white America to continue to think in racial terms?” Moreover, the failure to even mention economic gaps among test takers can cause us to misdiagnose the root sources of inequality and ignore deep and pervasive issues of class inequality.
I have two concerns about the reporting of these data by the ACT and news organizations.
First, any discussion of the racial achievement gap should be accompanied by some discussion of the racial opportunity gap. Telling readers that Asians and whites are far more likely to pass tests than Latinos and blacks, without talking about the quality of schools or teachers or the safety of neighborhoods, paints an incomplete picture and can perpetuate pernicious stereotypes.
Second, these data and the accompanying discussions ignore the class gap in both achievement and opportunity, which research finds is even greater than the racial and ethnic gaps.
It is true that if one examines income alone, race seems to predominate in explaining test scores because results often show that middle-class black students perform worse on standardized tests than low-income whites and Asians.
But income is a poor indicator of socioeconomic status. When researchers consider a wide array of economic factors—such as family income, parents’ education levels and occupation, school and neighborhood socioeconomic status, and wealth/net worth—the comparative importance of race diminishes considerably.
Controlling for a variety of socioeconomic factors, Georgetown University researchers Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl found the predicted SAT score of blacks was 56 points lower than whites. By contrast, being highly disadvantaged by socioeconomic status predicted an SAT score 399 points lower than that of the most socioeconomically advantaged students. In other words, the disadvantages of class outweighed the disadvantages of race by 7:1.
It is common in academia to argue that in America, we don’t like to talk about race, but the presentation of ACT results is just one example of how false that claim often is. As Walter Benn Michaels has noted, “in fact, we love to talk about race,” especially in the university.
But talking incessantly about race, and using race as a proxy for larger class issues, can perpetuate false stereotypes about racial and ethnic groups. As Stephen Carter has asked, “Is it a good thing, is it a safe thing, to encourage white America to continue to think in racial terms?” Moreover, the failure to even mention economic gaps among test takers can cause us to misdiagnose the root sources of inequality and ignore deep and pervasive issues of class inequality.
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