Why Do Black Students Lag Behind Peers?

Why do black students lag behind their peers? There are plenty of theories and debates on the topic. Some say it’s the culture. Others say it’s in the genes. Still others blame poverty. Regardless of the reason, the question is, what, if anything, can the education system do about it?

One “solution” has been to compensate for the academic gap in compulsory education by admitting students to colleges and universities under “affirmative action,” which is nothing more than race preferences. Many schools across the country assess minority applicants under a different (lower) standard than everyone else. A certain percentage of black students with lower grades and scores is admitted over white and Asian students with higher grades and scores for purposes of “diversity.”

Last year, the Center for Equal Opportunity released two reports that showed law schools at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University admitted black and Hispanic students with “significantly lower undergraduate” GPAs and LSAT scores over whites and Asians. CEO chair Linda Chavez said the odds favor black students over white students at the University of Arizona 250 to 1 and 1115 to 1 at Arizona State.

“[N]early a thousand white students during the years we studied were denied admission even though they had higher undergraduate GPAs and LSATs than the average African American student who was admitted–and over a hundred Asian and Latino students were in the same boat with them,” she said.

What’s really perplexing is that blacks tend to score lower than Hispanics who are learning English and, in some cases, students in special education. What’s going on?

The California State Board of Education has created yet another race-based committee to try to answer the question. (Source) What will the committee accomplish? Probably not much. Blaming poverty and parents’ low education levels for the gap isn’t useful. So-called affirmative action and No Child Left Behind haven’t closed the gap. Smaller class sizes and watered down standardized tests haven’t fix the problem, either.

The American Civil Rights Institute‘s Ward Connerly believes it’s the culture, and he disagrees with the race-based committee’s “segregated approach to educating black kids.” He added: “On the one hand it’s goofy to be doing this at this point in American history,” he said. “On the other hand, we do have a problem.”

While there is no end of special committees created to address the academic achievement gap, I don’t believe they will ever be effective. As I see it, there must be a fundamental shift in the minds of individuals. We don’t need to convince groups of the value of learning and achieving; parents need to be convinced that both are important.

No committee or government will ever solve the problem. The question that remains is, how do you help individuals think differently about education and achievement?