middle class and tests

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu>]

Ogbu's study of the middle class African American students in Shaker 
Heights schools (an affluent, mostly white suburb in Ohio) shows that they 
do significantly better than all low income kids on standardized tests, but 
still lag behind white peers in Shaker Heights.  The white kids in Shaker 
Heights are in the upper middle class brackets and come from families with 
several generations of privilege, and their scores are really high.  I 
believe the Black kids' scores are also above the tests' norms, even though 
their families do not go many generations back as members of the middle 
class.  This lends credence to the idea that test scores are a reflection 
of social class.

What is the evidence of middle class Black kids' weakness on standardized 
tests?  Maybe it's derived from Claude Steele's "stereotype threat" studies 
at Stanford, where various groups showed lower scores after having been 
told that "Your ethnicity usually doesn't do well on this test, so don't 
worry about your score"  Black kids did more poorly under this test 
condition than when they had not been given this suggestion before taking a 
similar test.  But the same thing happened to white kids.  But this 
phenomenon is not the justification for a blanket statement about middle 
class African Americans.




At 01:40 PM 5/8/03, you wrote:
> Arthur,
>
> I almost hate to ask but couldn't resist...I would like to know where
> the following statement came from and where the research is to back it
> up?
>
>
> "Middle class black kids still get poor test scores whether they are in
> a all black or an integrated setting."
>
> Karen
>
>
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