Learning, Race, and School Success

Abstract

At virtually every grade level, differences in the degree of school success attained vary with a number of student characteristics such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and IQ; i.e, school success depends on a variety of factors other than ability to learn. It has been established that white children are more successful in school than black children, high-SES children succeed more often than low-SES children, and high-IQ children succeed more often than low-IQ children. The problem for educational research is to answer the question, Why does school success depend more directly on ethnicity, SES, and IQ than on the ability to learn? The question is obviously an important and deeply intriguing one. It is tempting to enumerate possible answers hastily and vigorously; however, such a response is premature. There is a necessary prior task-to establish the case that the question is based in valid assumptions and that it is properly phrased. Indeed, the burden of this paper is precisely to present a brief for this case. Many would disagree with both the assumptions and the phrasing of the question; such misgivings have considerable justification. For example, both evidence and beliefs support the notion that IQ is an index of learning ability. If this notion is valid, it makes nonsense of the statement that school success depends on IQ more than on learning ability. Consider also the quandary presented by the fact that IQ is frequently used as a measure of the effectiveness of schooling. Intelligence test performance is the most pervasively used method for evaluating the effectiveness of preschool programs for disadvantaged children. If IQ is a valid measure of the efficacy of schooling, then the statement that school success depends on IQ is trivial at best. Both of these examples demand a closer examination of the question with which we started: Why does school success depend more directly on ethnicity, SES, and IQ than on learning ability? First, consider the term school success. Although success in school can be variously defined, it is used here to refer primarily to performance on standardized tests of school achievement and secondarily to evaluations of