Despite many attempts to close the black-white scholastic achievement gap, every effort so far has failed.
While there are obviously social factors involved here, people are afraid to bring up an obvious factor that has been supported by scientific research - if you plot the Gaussian distribution of the so-called "g" (general intelligence quotient) factor for American blacks, it ends up trailing the Gaussian distribution of white g-factors by about one standard deviation.
People can challenge the validity of tests for "g" all they want, but research confirms that higher g-factors are correlated with better life outcomes, from income over time to general health to subaspects of intelligence such as working memory.
Furthermore, scientists have applied principle component analyses to various tests of "g" (many of which don't even require literacy), and have found a high level of "isomorphism" across tests - this means that different tests do, indeed, test the same "thing" that we call "g", regardless of whatever else we think about intelligence testing.
(For further details and statistical analysis, see the study “Just one g: consistent results from three test batteries” by Johnson, et. al.)
Anyhow, do we just have to accept that the achievement gap will simply NEVER close as long as there is a corresponding cognition gap? We can try and try and try, but the truth is, you simply can't turn someone with an 85 IQ into a scientist. We can barely turn them into high school graduates.
Why are people so terrified to talk about this issue? It is completely absent from any debate about education policy. NOBODY talks about the bell curves or intelligence gaps. However, these things are not "racist" - statistics are race-neutral, they simply report the world as it is.
And so we stumble along in intentional ignorance...
Again, statistics are not racist; statistics are representations of various conditions of the world.
We're not talking about phrenology here. This is serious statistics-based science which covers decades of research across nations and social groups.
While there are obviously social factors involved here, people are afraid to bring up an obvious factor that has been supported by scientific research - if you plot the Gaussian distribution of the so-called "g" (general intelligence quotient) factor for American blacks, it ends up trailing the Gaussian distribution of white g-factors by about one standard deviation.
People can challenge the validity of tests for "g" all they want, but research confirms that higher g-factors are correlated with better life outcomes, from income over time to general health to subaspects of intelligence such as working memory.
Furthermore, scientists have applied principle component analyses to various tests of "g" (many of which don't even require literacy), and have found a high level of "isomorphism" across tests - this means that different tests do, indeed, test the same "thing" that we call "g", regardless of whatever else we think about intelligence testing.
(For further details and statistical analysis, see the study “Just one g: consistent results from three test batteries” by Johnson, et. al.)
Anyhow, do we just have to accept that the achievement gap will simply NEVER close as long as there is a corresponding cognition gap? We can try and try and try, but the truth is, you simply can't turn someone with an 85 IQ into a scientist. We can barely turn them into high school graduates.
Why are people so terrified to talk about this issue? It is completely absent from any debate about education policy. NOBODY talks about the bell curves or intelligence gaps. However, these things are not "racist" - statistics are race-neutral, they simply report the world as it is.
And so we stumble along in intentional ignorance...
Again, statistics are not racist; statistics are representations of various conditions of the world.
We're not talking about phrenology here. This is serious statistics-based science which covers decades of research across nations and social groups.