`Stereotype Vulnerability’ Being Overcome As Black Students Raise Their SAT Scores And Collect More Degrees
For years the whispered joke at some of the nation’s most selective institutions compared higher education for many minority students to roach motels: Students walk in but they don’t walk out — at least not with degrees.
Now, not only are minority students succeeding, they are surpassing academic expectations. Part of the academic success story is told in the slow, but steady, rise of Scholastic Assessment Test scores among Blacks and other minority students. So much for walking in to higher education.
The walking out punchline is being undercut by an even more prized statistic from the College Board showing a steady increase in recent years in the number of degrees awarded to Black students.
Rising Expectations
Even with improvements, however, a performance gap remains between Black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts.
“The thing that accounts for the gap is the treatment that the kids get,” says Dr. Abdul Ali Shabazz, a mathematics professor and graduate programs coordinator at Clark Atlanta University (GA). “Test scores have nothing to do with it.”
