The Black-White Achievement Gap
A Call to Overcome Today’s Major Barrier to Racial Equality and Social Justice More than half a century after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, inequality still reigns supreme in America’s classrooms. Based on results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other studies, African American students score below 75 percent of white students on most standardized tests. Not coincidentally, young white adults are approximately twice as likely as their black peers to earn a college degree, and nearly three times less likely to land in prison. In critical academic matters, why do black American children overwhelmingly lag behind white American children? And what are the long-term economic, social, and racial ramifications for our country if we continue to overlook this deeply distressing reality? “It’s an undeniable truth that we have a serious educational problem in America,” states distinguished former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. In THE BLACK...