2009 - The Black-White-Other Test Score Gap: Academic Achievement Among Mixed Race Adolescents

Attribution: Herman, Melissa
Researchers: Melissa Herman
University Affiliation: Dartmouth College
Email: Melissa.Herman@Dartmouth.edu
Research Question:
Test theories of racial differences in achievement among mono-racial and multi-racial high school students.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Sociology of Education
Journal Entry: Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 20-46
Year: 2009
Findings:
  • The average achievement of individual biracial groups falls somewhere between the means levels of their component monoracial groups’ achievement, and that racial contexts, rather than ethnic identity explain the achievement of multi-racial youth.
  • The school achievement of multi-racial youth is most clearly related to the racial composition of the contexts they live in such as peer group, family, neighborhood, and school.
  • The racial/ethnic aspects of contexts are important factors in achievement among adolescents, particularly for biracial youth.
  • The school racial context variables (percent white in school, and school deviance) were significant predictors of biracial achievement, as were the peer crowd context variables of peer values and minority peer crowd membership.
  • The neighborhood is also important: biracial youth in higher SES neighborhoods have significantly higher achievement.
  • The racial composition of the neighborhood does not have an effect on achievement in any race group.
  • The hierarchy of achievement by race among multi-racial groups is comparable to one for monoracial groups: part-Black and part-Latino youth fare poorly compared to part-White and part-Asian youth.
  • Multi-racial students who self-identify as Black or Latino achieve less than those who identify as White or Asian.
  • Racial identity is not as strong a factor in explaining the achievement of multi-racial or mono-racial students. Only among Latino and White students is ethnic identity a strong factor and it has a positive relation to achievement.
  • Biracial youth respond to the dynamic of the contexts in which they live, particularly their neighborhoods and peer groups.
  • Subgroup analyses show that only Black-Whites and Black-Asians are significantly different from their respective monoracial component group.
Keywords: Academic AchievementContextHigh SchoolLatinosPeer EffectsRacial CompositionMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: SurveyAnalysis Methods: Auto-Regressive Change Models Sampling Frame:9 HS in California & Wisconsin
Sampling Types: NonrandomAnalysis Units: StudentData Types: Quantitative-Cross Sectional
Data Description:
  • Survey population in this study consists of all students in nine high schools in California and Wisconsin between 1987 and 1990.
  • There were 10,275 respondents, 8,732 (85%) reported a race for themselves and for both biological parents. 1,49 6 (14.6%) were designated as biracial . Of the mixed-race respondents, 45% are biracial and the remainder multi-racial.
  • All respondents who indicated their own race are included in the analyses.
  • Studies Black, White, Asian, Latino students and mixes of these races.
  • Theories in question are: status attainment, oppositional culture, and educational attitudes
  • STATUS ATTAINMENT
  • – DV: achievement (student-reported grades: average of 4 student-reported grades in social studies, English, math, and science).
  • – IV: student-reported mean years of parents’ education (SES), academic orientation of peers, educational aspirations, fatalism, school deviance, and prior achievement (grades)
  • OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE
  • DV: Achievement (student-reported grades: average of 4 student-reported grades in social studies, English, math, and science).
  • IV: Educational expectation, school engagement, perceptions of ethnic discrimination by peers, teachers, and other adults, minority peer group membership, positivity of feelings about ethnic identity
  • EDUCATIONAL ATTITUDES
  • DV: Achievement (student-reported grades: average of 4 student-reported grades in social studies, English, math, and science).
  • IV: Concrete and abstract beliefs, SES status, effort in school, peer academic values
  • CONTEXTUAL MODEL
  • DV: Achievement (student-reported grades: average of 4 student-reported grades in social studies, English, math, and science).
  • IV: Peer group (membership in an ethnic crowd as opposed to reputation or activity-based crowd), school context (percentage of whites), family context (behavioral control, involvement in school , psychological autonomy granted by parents), and neighborhood context (racial and SES composition).
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts