August 2009

The ever-present academic gap between the races is one of the main reasons racial preferences exist in 2009. Redressing past injustice and promoting equality are mere platitudes to placate the masses. Reams have been written about the gap—how to close it, narrow it, downplay it, or ignore it. But it’s still with us, seemingly intractable.

USA Today reports on SAT score disparities between people of different races, sex, and income levels. No surprises. The average score gap between Asians and blacks was by far the largest: 347 points. Students of Asian decent averaged 1623; whites 1581; Mexicans 1362;  Puerto Ricans 1345; Indians or Alaskan natives 1448; and blacks 1276. The national average was 1509.

One question I rarely see/hear asked is this: Why do students of Mexican descent, likely from low-income families and whose first language may or may not be English, consistently outscore native-born blacks?

According to the report, female test takers averaged 27 points lower than males. Test takers who reported family incomes of over $200,000 and year and higher scored higher on the SAT than those who reported family incomes of less than $20,000. While it’s true that higher-earning families can afford to send children to better schools and SAT preparation programs, that’s not the end of the story. Lower income whites and Asians on average outscore wealthier blacks.

What will it take to close or significantly narrow the academic achievement gap?

College Board president Gaston Caperton said, “As a country we must do better at providing students of every background equal access to education, equal access to the best teachers, and equal access to the best counseling.”

“Equal access” is a euphemism for more money and more preferences. Millions of dollars have been poured into schools and prep programs, and the gap remains. Children are bused across town and are admitted and denied entrance to schools based on the color of their skin in an attempt to achieve a magical balance of races that will close the achievement gap, and the gap remains. Crying racism generates sympathy and government funds, but the gap remains.

What people are only now starting to talk about publicly is how family structure, or the lack thereof, affects the gap, which shows itself beyond school in employment, rate of imprisonment, etc.

An intact family is one where the children’s parents are married to each other and living under the same roof. Studies have shown that children in these kind of families are better off than children raised by one parent, typically the mother. Fatherless children are more likely to end up having babies out-of-wedlock, drop out of school, use drugs, commit crimes, spend time in prison, and on and on. The rate of out-of-wedlock pregnancy among blacks is a whopping 75 percent. It’s higher in some urban areas.

When it comes to closing the gap between the races, there is no magic fairy dust. People are intuitively aware that money is not the solution, and neither are guilt-tripping and lowering standards. It’s going to take honesty and hard work to even make a dent in the gap.

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Achievement gaps between the races are not only embarrassing to educational institutions. They’re also frustrating to those obsessed with skin deep-only diversity. That’s why some schools blatantly lower admission standards for black students, while others take a subtler approach by using proxies for race.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Boston College, DePaul University, and Tufts University, to name a few, are using “noncognitive” criteria to admit more preferred minority students. (Americans of Asian descent are not included in this category.) An excerpt:

“Using recently developed evaluation systems, these schools and others are aiming to quantify so-called noncognitive traits such as leadership, resilience and creativity. Colleges say such assessments are boosting the admissions chances for some students who might not have qualified based solely on grades and traditional test scores.”

Noncognitive criteria are, plain and simple, proxies for race. Because blacks and Hispanics tend to score lower on standardized tests than whites and Asians, schools want to place less emphasis on such tests. The question is, why would measuring so-called “leadership, resilience and creativity” result in more racial diversity? Why not less?

Northeastern University created the Torch Scholars Program to determine who has “leadership potential or [has] overcome adversity.” Again, how would this increase the presence of black students on campus? The answer will stun you.

Obviously, the admissions folks are applying noncognitive assessments like leadership more heavily to minority applicants. Stunned yet? Michael Rosman, general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights, told the WSJ that schools “can’t apply them in a discriminatory fashion or adopt them solely for the purpose of increasing minorities in their classes.”

But isn’t that exactly what’s happening? Noncognitive assessments are race proxies for colleges and universities that want to add more style to their discriminatory practices.

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