National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics has just issued an important analysis of black-white differences in various economic and educational outcomes. The main finding is not surprising: the higher the prior academic achievement of blacks, the narrower the gaps between blacks and whites in young adulthood-and sometimes the gaps close entirely. For example, "for young adults with similar levels of prior educational achievement [defined as parity on earlier tests of math and/or reading], black-white gaps in unemployment rates were at least one-half smaller than for young adults as a whole. Among men with similar levels of prior educational achievement, black-white gaps in annual earnings were at least two-fifths smaller than for men as a whole. Black women with levels of prior educational achievement similar to white women earned as much as, or more than, their white counterparts." Similar gap-narrowings are visible in college attendance and completion rates. As for the achievement gaps themselves, in math the black-white gap narrows in elementary school, widens in junior high and doesn't change during high school. The reading pattern is more erratic. The authors do not say what causes what. They do not make predictions or policy recommendations. They acknowledge that other factors besides education are at work. They merely report, with exhaustive documentation, that similar levels of black-white educational achievement are associated with more similar attainments by black and white Americans during young adulthood. You may already have supposed this to be so-but here's 44 pages of evidence. The publication number is NCES 2001-061. You can surf to http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001061. You can write U.S. Department of Education, ED Pubs, P.O. Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794, call toll free to (877)-4ED-PUBS or phone John Ralph at (202) 502-7441.
