Education outcomes in the United States by race and other classifications

Achievement

The education of African Americans lags behind those of other U.S. ethnic groups, such as European Americans and Asian Americans, as reflected by test scores, grades, urban high school graduation rates, rates of disciplinary action, and rates of conferral of undergraduate degrees.Fact|date=February 2007 Indeed, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates are comparable to those of whites 25 or 30 years ago. Although the African immigrant population actually has the highest educational attainment of any group in the United States, they represent a small group. [U.S. Census http://www.asian-nation.org/immigrant-stats.shtml]

Although African Americans generally lag behind Asian Americans in test scores, so do European Americans to a lesser degree. However, compared with children in areas of China and India where some children, especially girls end their education after the elementary level, education in the United States is compulsory to age 16 regardless of race or class. Over half of public education students will be required to pass standards-based assessments which expect that all students to be at least exposed to algebra by high school and exit prepared for college. This is not true in many other nations, such as Germany, where many are tracked as unskilled laborers.

Education Attainment: Census

(Issued August 2003) Educational Attainment by race and gender: 2000 [ [http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-24.pdf] Education Attainment in the United States 2000] Census 2000 Brief Percent of Adults 25 and over in group Ranked by advanced degree HS SC BA AD Asian alone . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.4 64.6 44.1 17.4 Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.1 52.5 26.1 10.0 White alone, not Hispanic or Latino.. . . . 85.5 55.4 27.0 9.8 White alone... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83.6 54.1 26.1 9.5 Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.7 51.1 22.8 7.8 Two or more races. . . . . . . . . . . . 73.3 48.1 19.6 7.0 Black or African American alone . . . . . 72.3 42.5 14.3 4.8 Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 78.3 44.6 13.8 4.1 American Indian and Alaska Native alone . . 70.9 41.7 11.5 3.9 Hispanic or Latino (of any race).. . . . . 52.4 30.3 10.4 3.8 Some other race alone . . . . . . . . . . . 46.8 25.0 7.3 2.3 HS = high school completed SC = some college BA = bachelor degree AD = advanced degree

African Americans lag behind whites in 2000 by nearly a factor of two. However it is less frequently observed that whites lag behind Asians by nearly as large a ratio. The group with the least education are not the African Americans, but the American Indians, Hispanic or Latino or other races who have quite a different legacy of discrimination.

College

Asian Americans, whose parents have the highest rate of education, attend college at the highest rates, while African Americans at about half the rate of whites, and Hispanics at just 11 percent. It has been noted that far more African American women attend and complete college than men, a trend that is now also true of the general population to a lesser extent.

"Completed 4 years of college age 25-29 "(1998) [Public Information Office, U.S. Census Bureau. [http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/cb98-177.html Asians and Pacific Islanders Have Nation's Highest Median Household Income in 1997, Census Bureau Reports] . 24 September 1998.]

US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans age 25 to 29 had completed high school, lagging only slightly behind 93 percent for whites. For all over the age of 25, clear majorities of whites, Asian Americans and African Americans had graduated at 88 percent, 85 percent and 77 percent, respectively. 56 percent, or barely over half of Hispanics 25 and over, had completed high school.

Testing

IQ tests have been largely banned for use in education in states such as California ["Mother calls IQ test ban for black children racist ..to African-American children to determine their placement in special education classes in California. ... [www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002326.html] ] . But new graduation examinations have raised the standards for a diploma to a level necessary to succeed in admission to college, rather than passing for a minimal level of effort and learning.Fact|date=February 2007

Income and class

SAT Test scores vs income and race

white |black |Hispanic |Asian income verbamath |v m |v m |v m x$1,000 | |
under 10 409 460| 320 315| 330 386| 343 482 10-20 418 459| 337 369| 349 403| 363 500 20-30 428 471| 352 382| 369 420| 497 518 30-40 433 478| 362 393| 384 431| 415 528 40-50 439 488| 375 405| 399 446| 432 537 50-60 446 498| 382 414| 409 456| 444 549 60-70 453 506| 385 415| 415 458| 453 558 over 70 475 533| 407 442| 430 478| 476 595 overall 448 498| 376 426| 356 388| 418 538

Source: 1995 College Board SAT Profiles [ [http://www.arthurhu.com/index/test.htm#satincome] Hu's Index of Diversity]

Conservative African American scholars such as Thomas Sowell observe that while SAT scores are lower for students with less parental education and income. Asian Americans who took the SAT with incomes below $10,000 score 482 in math in 1995, comparable to whites earning $30-40,000 and higher and blacks over $70,0000. Test scores in middle-income black communities, such as Prince George County, are still not comparable to those in non-black suburbs.

State standards

Most state tests showing African American failure rates anywhere from two to four times the rate of whites, such as Washington State's WASL test, and only half to one-quarter as likely to achieve a high score, even though these tests were designed to eliminate the negative effects of bias associated with standardized multiple choice tests. It is a top goal of education reform to eliminate the "Education gap" between all races, though skeptics question whether legislation such as No Child Left Behind truly closes the gap just by raising expectations. Others, such as Alfie Kohn, observe it may merely penalize those who do not score as well as the most educated ethnic and income groups. [See 2006 Wall Street article by Charles Murray which claims NCLB punishes minority students and does not close basic skill differences]

"Scored Level 3 on WASL Washington Assessment of Student Learning, Mathematics Grade 4 (1997) Data: Office Washington State Superintendent of Instruction

References