Racial and Cultural Test Bias, Stereotype Threat and Their Implications

In the United States alone, minorities have struggled for centuries to earn the basic rights and opportunities as others. African Americans have always worked harder and been treated maliciously just because of the color of their skin. There have been numerous movements, peaceful protests, and brutal battles by black leaders against whites for equality, justice, and a fair chance at a better life. It is safe to say that in the past, blacks were not allowed to progress or have a mind of their own. In comparison to the past, the educational sector for minorities still remains as an extreme societal challenge. For many years, African Americans have been denied educational advancement opportunities. The higher education area suffers greatly for the black population but very few people will address why this matter occurs. Do black families’ socioeconomic status affect the children’s education? The socioeconomic status is easily defined as an individuals or families’ economic and social rank based on income, education level, and occupation. The socioeconomic status of black families does affect their children’s academic success, however; it does not determine their children’s success. This educational disadvantage for black students needs to be addressed because of the lack of financial and emotional support that minority students receive due to their parents lack of experience and knowledge with higher education. Many black students become a product of their environment because

Today's education is often viewed as failing in its goal of educating students, especially those students characterized as minorities, including African American, Hispanic, and Appalachian students (Quiroz, 1999). Among the minority groups mentioned, African American males are affected most adversely. Research has shown that when Black male students are compared to other students by gender and race they consistently rank lowest in academic achievement (Ogbu, 2003), have the worst attendance record (Voelkle, 1999), are suspended and expelled the most often (Raffaele Mendez, 2003; Staples, 1982), are most likely to drop out of school, and most often fail to graduate from high school or to earn a GED (Pinkney, 2000; Roderick, 2003).

Some research on African American male students shows that they are at least three grades behind Whites in

Among the nation 's largest Division I universities, the graduation rate for black students was 44% in 2013, compared with 66% for white students (Marklein). This fact along with the article, A Letter to My Nephew, by James Baldwin from the stimulus material, sparked my interest. I began to research the general topic of African Americans in college. Baldwin wrote about the idea of white americans intentionally hindering the success of black americans. As he states that white americans did not expect african americans to aspire to excellence and made sure that african americans knew in as many ways as possible that they were worthless human beings. Researching more into this idea, I found a correlation between African American success

Throughout the years the dropout rate of African Americans has increased and decreased. Many people look at black students as if they sit there and do not learn anything at all but we do try. Some may think that the only reason the black students drop out is because their grades, but that’s not true. Some dropout because of financial pressure, health problems, mental, emotional, and social issues, and may not have family support.

African American males’ cultural identity has been shaped by stereotypes placed on them down through history. Some stereotypes associated with African American males include incompetence, laziness, and aggression. African American males’ academic performance is often affected because of these stereotypes (Irving & Hudley, 2008). The literature generally concludes that African American male students’ educational aspirations, occupational expectations, cultural identity, and attitudes toward school are related to academic achievement (Irving & Hudley, 2008). Cultural mistrust for African Americans revolves around their belief that public schools cannot be trusted to provide an adequate education when the schools they attend are

The root of the African American education gap originates from anti-intellectualism. It would be disheartening to think that what is holding African Americans back is part of African American culture itself. However, only if African Americans, and all Americans, are honest about their flaws, will we be able to fix the flaws and make progress forward. It is believed that African Americans are not naturally inferior in intelligence; actually, based on the article by researcher Lindsey Cook, African American students are reported as having high learning potentials when they first attend schools. What African Americans really need is a driving force that motivates them to excel in academic fields. The first step for African Americans to initiate

Notably, it is up to reader to form an opinion. The thesis of this work, simply outlines the information that will be presented in an unbiased manner. Over the years many people have been interested in the rate at which success can be measured at a young age. One focus of this report is the trend in the gap between black and white educational attainment, achievement and contributing factors. A lot of the time we like to think that just being born in America automatically gives us the keys to success. But it does not, many factors contribute to a child 's accomplishments such as access to educational resources like preschool and libraries. As a whole, the nation has moved forward in so many aspects, but poor black

It’s common knowledge that people who have higher education are more likely to succeed, having better paying jobs. African Americans have one of lowest higher education graduation rate in the country, the NCES reported in 2009-2010 that the number of African American graduates was 164,844 compared to their Caucasian counterparts with 1,167,499. African Americans made up 10% of all graduates in 2010 (NCES 2012). Although the statistics show a huge gap between African Americans and Caucasian, African Americans are progressing and increasing

With the rising high school graduation rates among the African-American student body, African-American students are still underrepresented in institutions of higher education (Stinnett, Perkins, Parla, Monson & Ready, 2017). Despite the increasing trends in high school graduation rates among African-American students, immediate college enrollment has not increased significantly since 1990 (Stinnett et al., 2017).

Even though slavery happened almost 400 years ago, the disparities between African-Americans and their Caucasian counterparts is still present in today’s time. According to one source, African-American children are more likely to be in poverty than Caucasian children. These unsettling facts do not stop with just childhood, the unemployment rate for African-Americans is twice as high as it is for Caucasians (Ethnic and Racial, n.d.). When reading these statistics, some people might think that education is the answer that can fix all problems. They might even say that everyone essentially has the same chance to achieve greatness and become successful. However, even high-performing African-American students can be subject to unfair treatment.

Standardized, merit-based assessment also disadvantages minority and low socioeconomic status students because of its presentation as a measure of ability. The performance of both black and low socioeconomic status students depends upon the context in which the test is administered. If tests are presented as measures of ability, these students tend to perform lower than their more advantaged peers; if tests are presented as general non-diagnostic studies, they perform equally. As one of over 100 examples, when administered questions from the Graduate Record Examination under normal testing circumstances, low socioeconomic status students answered an average of 8.90 correctly, compared with 12.30 for their high socioeconomic status peers. When presented as a general laboratory study, the scores were 11.46 and 10.89, respectively (Croizet, 2008). Such differences arise due to social anxiety and stereotype threat, the fear of confirming the supposed inferiority of a social group (Croizet, 2008).

The current uproar over standardized testing is being battled by cultural minorities who demand equality. “Cultural bias” refers to the idea that the differences between scores of racial and ethnic groups are caused by a bias towards the “American-born, English-speaking majority” of the US population. From the simple IQ test to the SAT, standardized testing has become an unfair predictor and artificial decision maker for this country’s minority, especially those newly immigrated. Economic and cultural biases leave for little opportunity for these examinees to perform well, partially because of the failure of the government to prepare and assimilate minority students.

Some racial groups value hunting knowledge because they are required to hunt for their food for survival, and some increase their chances of survival if they have the academic intelligence to succeed in a paid job. Considering this, standardised IQ tests fail to create statistically comparable results due to the fact that each race places different loadings of importance on different abilities (Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005). It would be unreasonable to expect an Amazonian tribe member to understand a question such as “which design best completes the sequence?” for example, because this may not be the language or type of question they are accustomed to (Reynolds & Suzuki, 2012). Yet failure to understand such questions might affect their score and imply they are unintelligent according to a standardised IQ test. This is known as a ‘test bias’, because the issue lies within the construction of the measuring tool rather than a lack of intellect (Sternberg, 1980). As this example highlights, it is necessary to acknowledge racial differences in scientific endeavours in order to achieve total congruency, due to the diversity of cultural values.

In this article, psychologists Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Steven Spencer prove to us about the existent stereotypic threat against African Americans or women that widens that achievement gap which people ignore or tend to think that it does not exist anymore. Many studies have been done where students have not performed well due to stereotypic pressure put onto them by educators and classmates. Steele and Aronson did a study where they give Black and White students the GRE and told them that this exam determined their intelligence which would give into the stereotype that Whites are more intelligent than Blacks. This put pressure on the students and when they result of the exams came out, it was proven that due to the stereotypic threat,