Education outcomes in the United States by race and other classifications

== Achievement =

The education of African Americans lags behind those of other U.S. ethnic groups, such as European Americans and Asian Americans, as reflected by test scores, grades, urban high school graduation rates, rates of disciplinary action, and rates of conferral of undergraduate degrees. Indeed, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates are comparable to those of whites 25 or 30 years ago. Although the African immigrant population actually has the highest educational attainment of any group in the United States, they are a small group and typically not as heavily documented or even distinguished as African Americans.

Although African Americans generally lag behind Asian Americans in test scores, so do European Americans to a lesser degree. However compared with children in areas of China and India where some children, especially girls end their education after the elementary level, education in the United States is compulsory to age 16 regardless of race or class. Over half of public education students will be required to pass standards-based assessments which expect that all students to be at least exposed to algebra by high school and exit prepared for college. This is not true in many other nations such as Germany where many are tracked as unskilled laborers.

Education Attainment: Census 2000
(Issued August 2003) Educational Attainment by race and gender: 2000 Census 2000 Brief Percent of Adults 25 and over in group Ranked by advanced degree                  HS   SC   BA   AD Asian alone. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.4 64.6 44.1 17.4 Men. . . . . . . . . . . . .              80.1 52.5 26.1 10.0 White alone, not Hispanic or Latino.. . . . 85.5 55.4 27.0 9.8 White alone... .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 83.6 54.1 26.1  9.5 Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   80.7 51.1 22.8  7.8 Two or more races. . . . . . . . . . . .   73.3 48.1 19.6  7.0 Black or African American alone. . . . .  72.3 42.5 14.3  4.8 Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander  78.3 44.6 13.8  4.1 American Indian and Alaska Native alone. . 70.9 41.7 11.5 3.9 Hispanic or Latino (of any race).. . . . . 52.4 30.3 10.4  3.8 Some other race alone. . . . . . . . . . . 46.8 25.0 7.3  2.3 HS = high school completed SC = some college BA = bachelor degree AD = advanced degree

African Americans lag behind whites in 2000 by nearly a factor of two. However it is less frequently observed that whites lag behind Asians by nearly as large a ratio. The group with the least education are not the African Americans, but the American Indians, Hispanic or Latino or other races who have quite a different legacy of discrimination.

College
Asian Americans, whose parents have the highest rate of education, attend college at the highest rates, while African Americans at about half the rate of whites, and Hispanics at just 11 percent. It has been noted that far more African American women attend and complete college than men, a trend that is now also true of the general population to a lesser extent.

Completed 4 years of college age 25-29 (1998)

Illiteracy
African Americans were once denied equal educations. Even as late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. However, by 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined had been largely eradicated among African Americans the number of among young adults was less than one percent, though African Americans still lag in more stringent definitions of document literacy. Inability to read, write or speak English in America today is largely an issue for immigrants, mostly from Asia and Latin America.

Illiteracy by Age And Race: 1947 to 1969 In thousands except percent Civilian noninstitutional population 14 yrs and over Source: US census

Governmental policies
Successive U.S. governments have implemented many policies aimed at improving African American education. Schools were once legally segregated, and African American children often assigned to inferior schools, before people like Ruby Bridges challenged these policies in the 1960s. However, scholars such as Gary Orrfield of Harvard observe that many African Americans continue to be effectively segregated from other other races in low-scoring schools. Some desegregation programs, such as that in Seattle, Washington, have been opposed as stepping over the original goal of simply creating freedom to attend schools nearby their communities to making certain politically determined racial percentages a goal in itself.

Multiculturalism has been introduced to be more inclusive of African American and other minority cultures and history. Most school districts have also adopted diversity policies to encourage the hiring of more minority teachers and staff. Many progressive education curriculum reform policies, such as standards-based mathematics and inquiry-based science, were designed to be more inclusive of minority students and cultures and learning styles. As in the larger majority community, there remains a split between conservatives who believe that individuals should concentrate on a race-blind programs to master the same content as the most educated ethnic groups, and liberals who believe that the long historical legacy of discrimination and exclusion remains the largest impediment to equality in education, and who emphasize race-conscious policies and the continued application of affirmative action and desegregation principles.

High school graduation
Completed High School age 25-29 (1998)

US Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans age 25 to 29 had completed high school, lagging only slightly behind 93 percent for whites. For all over the age of 25, clear majorities of whites, Asian Americans and African Americans had graduated at 88 percent, 85 percent and 77 percent, respectively. 56 percent, or barely over half of Hispanics 25 and over had completed high school.

Testing
IQ tests have been largely banned for use in education in states such as California. But new graduation examinations have raised the standards for a diploma to a level necessary to succeed in admission to college, rather than passing for a minimal level of effort and learning.

Income and class
SAT Test scores vs income and race

white    |black    |Hispanic  |Asian income verbamath |v    m   |v    m   |v    m x$10,000          |         |         | under 10 409  460| 320  315| 330  386| 343  482 10-20    418  459| 337  369| 349  403| 363  500 20-30     428  471| 352  382| 369  420| 497  518 30-40     433  478| 362  393| 384  431| 415  528 40-50     439  488| 375  405| 399  446| 432  537 50-60     446  498| 382  414| 409  456| 444  549 60-70     453  506| 385  415| 415  458| 453  558 over 70   475  533| 407  442| 430  478| 476  595 overall  448  498| 376  426| 356  388| 418  538

Source: 1995 College Board SAT Profiles

Conservative African American scholars such as Thomas Sowell observe that while SAT scores are lower for students with less parental education and income. Asian Americans who took the SAT with incomes below $10,000 score 482 in math in 1995, comparable to whites earning $30-40,000 and higher than blacks over $70,0000. Test scores in middle-income black communities such as Prince George County are still not comparable to those in non-black suburbs.

State standards
Most state tests showing African American failure rates anywhere from two to four times the rate of whites, such as Washington State's WASL test, and only half to one-quarter as likely to achieve a high score, even though these tests were designed to eliminate the negative effects of bias associated with standardized multiple choice tests. It is a top goal of education reform to eliminate the Education gap between all races, though skeptics question whether legislation such as No Child Left Behind truly closes the gap just by raising expectations. Others like Alfie Kohn observe it may merely penalize those who do not score as well as the most educated ethnic and income groups.

''Scored Level 3 on WASL Washington Assessment of Student Learning, Mathematics Grade 4 (1997) Data: Office Washington State Superintendent of Instruction