A recent Census Bureau report has good news about African American
education. In Educational Attainment in the United States, the Census
Bureau reported that 86.2 percent of African Americans ages twenty-five
to twenty-nine were high school graduates in 1997, continuing an upward
trend in the educational attainment of African Americans that began in
1940.
For Whites between twenty-five and twenty-nine, the high school
completion rate was 87.6 percent, meaning there is no statistically
significant gap in the high school completion rates between African
Americans and Whites. In other words, as far as high school completion
is concerned, there is statistical parity between the youngest adult
cohort of African Americans and Whites.
My first reaction to this data was pleasure. It is not that this
smaller gap is unexpected — it has been closing for decades. It is
just that when we look at the distance we have come, this small gap is
amazing. In 1940, for example, 26 percent of Whites but only 7 percent
of African Americans over age twenty-five were high school graduates.
Considering the youngest group of adults, those twenty-five to
twenty-nine, 41.2 percent of Whites, compared to 12.3 percent of
African Americans, were high school graduates. In a fifty-seven year
period, the number of Whites graduating high school has more than
doubled, while the number of African Americans has increased sevenfold.
No matter how you slice it, that’s progress!
Of course, high school attainment doesn’t mean much in a high-tech
world where more education than high school is needed. So I’m hoping
that educators will not use these data to suggest that enough has been
done to improve African American educational attainment.
However, I’ve already heard that line run by one of my conservative
counterparts in the world of punditry. Eventually, she said, all the
gaps will narrow. You don’t need affirmative action or special programs
to help.
She could not be more wrong. Although the gap has narrowed with
college completion, proportionately, twice as many Whites as African
Americans finish college. According to this latest data, for
twenty-five- to twenty-nine-year-olds, 28.9 percent of Whites and 14.1
percent of African Americans have completed college (the college
completion rate is much higher — at 40 percent for Asian Americans; it
is also a somewhat lower 10 percent for Hispanics).
While these numbers are slightly higher for young adults than for
the overall population, the success we have had in graduating teens
from high school has not translated into success in getting high school
graduates of color into — and out of — college.
