<p>Blacks and Hispanics are certainly not inferior, nor are poor white kids inferior. The achievement gap is not related to genetics, if that is what the term inferior implies. I view the issue as one of nurture, rather than nature … and I do not mean nurture strictly as what the immediate family does/does not provide. Rather, it is the overall environment & how the individual responds to that environment. That is why there are plenty of achieving poor/minority kids, and plenty of underachieving rich, white kids. There are many factors at play.</p>
<p>But even a kid who truly wants to achieve has a tough time when he has to attend a school that simply does not provide what he needs to attain the level of achievement he could attain in another setting. This is true for all races, but it seems that minorities are more likely to be stuck in this type of setting than white students. Witness Detroit, for example.</p>
<p>I actually discourage the parents I serve from sharing standardized test scores with their children. In lower grades, it’s completely unnecessary, and students will view such results without the perspective adults have. (They will see them as equivalent to “grades,” --inappropriate positives & inappropriate negatives. Revealed high scores are “used” by students to rationalize poor daily performance, and conversely are internalized as shame and/or discouragement when classroom testing contradict those scores.)</p>
<p>I have lots of examples in my daily work of students doing beautifully on standardized tests but failing math concepts, writing, and vocabulary. I also have plenty of SpecEd students who bomb on most tests but whose incremental, consistent progress in school is contrary evidence of skill improvement, and who are very much at risk of discouragement by knowing test outcomes.</p>
<p>I recognize that it’s more difficult to withhold the information from high school students. They are more conscious of their & their family’s personal investment in those outcomes. But I always try to counsel parents beforehand on how to present demanded scores, and I would actually prefer their classroom teachers (often) to discuss these with students individually, as they will have the direct context for all of those scores. “We’ve just begun to tackle geometric proofs in class; there’s a lot still to cover in that, and that’s why you’ll see that reflected in your math scores.” “I compared your scores this year with those last year; recall that last year you were a couple of years behind in your reading mastery; you’ve made such signficant gains since then, that now you are slightly above the national average for your grade level. As you continue your outside reading, you will continue to see these scores improve.”</p>
<p>I don’t have the reference handy for the studies where explicitly telling minority students that they usually score lower depressed their later scores. But the effect is equally pronounced where gender is concerned – here’s a good article about that.</p>