Thanks for your comments. There's ample evidence that the skills gap was closing until the late 1980's. Derek Neal at the University of Chicago did a study about this back in 2006. You can access it using this National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) link:
All data sources indicate that black-white skill gaps diminished over most of the 20th century, but black-white skill gaps as measured by test scores among youth and educational attainment among young adults have remained constant or increased in absolute value since the late 1980s. I examine the potential importance of discrimination against skilled black workers, changes in black family structures, changes in black household incomes, black-white differences in parenting norms, and education policy as factors that may contribute to the recent stability of black-white skill gaps. Absent changes in public policy or the economy that facilitate investment in black children, best case scenarios suggest that even approximate black-white skill parity is not possible before 2050, and equally plausible scenarios imply that the black-white skill gap will remain quite significant throughout the 21st century.
Charles Murray documented that the skills gap was closing until the late 1980's in his most recent book, "Facing Reality." There's a graphic on page 34 that suggests the gap would have essentially closed by 2015 if the trends had continued past the late 1980's. You can see an updated version of this graph on page 37 of the notes to the book that you can download by using this link:
Murray acknowledged Neal's work on page 32 of the notes.
Many of us think the gaps can be closed, but the narrative behind the root causes of these gaps has to change first because how you approach the problem is different if you think "bias" is the issue instead of "development." Professor Loury explores these competing narratives in his Manhattan Institute paper about the persistence of racial inequality. Use this link to access it:
Fascinating material. Appreciate the link to Neal's work.
So let us try to separate the forest from the trees.
And let us begin with the misnomer, 'skills gap'.
If I beat you in a race, over and over again, would your coach be talking about your 'skills gap'? That when it came time to see who was faster in the 100m.... would he suggest that your skills, per se, were deficient? Would your serial losses, both severe and consistent, be attributed to a running mechanics issue? That your sprint 'know-how' was not as highly developed as mine? That you need to improve your knee lift, your stride length, the angle at which you hold your arms, etc? And that the only thing that separates our finishes was your honing of these proficiencies?
In fact, yes, there may be something to that analysis (I'm reminded of that scene in Chariots of Fire)....but... that's not really the issue, is it? That's not what we've witnessed for generations...and that's not what's driving the increasingly insane elimination of standards. The issue is not 'skills' that need to be sharpened (because we have the entire Education-Industrial Complex eager to do that sharpening) ; it's flat out performance (especially since that performance for decades had been improving...until that improvement ceased)
The first thing, the very first thing, that any coach would immediately question looking at 60 years plus of poor finishes is EFFORT, effort as measured by practice and the amount of hard work the two runners are investing to improve. When race after race is decided not by 'tenths of seconds' at the tape but entire standard deviations...the problem is not skills, it's sweat, dedication, intensity, and work. The problem is attitude and the desire to translate that attitude into effort.
There is a massive difference between these two understandings.
Skills gaps are relatively easy to bridge. 'Sam Mussabini' can coach 'Harold Abrahams' to 'run on hot bricks' and find another 2 yards when he races Liddell...because Abrahams desperately wants to win and is willing to work to accomplish that goal. But we're not talking about 2 measly yards which separate Gold Medal finishes from Silver or Bronze. We’re talking about not qualifying to be on the same track.
Neal concludes his analysis by saying that although....“It is not clear why the process of black-white (performance) convergence appeared to stop around 1990”...it would certainly seem that those black-white performance differences we witness later in life seem to be directly related to differences in “early childhood experiences”. He then moves on to review possible ‘childhood intervention programs’. Why intervention? Because ‘early childhood experience’ is ‘in the home’ experience. ‘In the home’ is not an environment naturally subject to public policy. ‘In the home’ is private. It’s how children are being raised by their parents, outside public purview. It is where we, as a society, build the essential, personal foundation upon which our public education either succeeds or falls.
The reason Neal is discussing public policy intervention to improve ‘early childhood experience’ is because – at a very gross/macro level, child-rearing within the home is and has been failing, a failure that begins with an out-of-wedlock birthrate of +70%.
It's not ‘skills development’ which is deficient; it’s the prototypical Black Family...which is not so much a family as a single Mom, who either aborts her pregnancy (at a rate 3X higher than a normal population demographic would indicate) or brings to term a child who will be raised without a father, inside a culture which – per Neal – would seem to require early public intervention if the aggregate, ‘Fatherless Black Youth’ are to develop in such a way that public education succeeds and the performance gap narrows.
The question, of course: is that Home subject to, open to, public policy intervention in such a way that culture-wide dysfunction (as in the 70%+ out-of-wedlock birthrate) can be corrected?
I don’t know.
As a society we’ve been radically concerned for generations about the social costs of illegal drug use. And yet, despite all that concern, despite all the trillions of dollars spent on anti-drug programs and intervention programs, and ‘Just Say No’ (This is your brain on drugs...a mind is a terrible thing to waste!)...despite all that, death from opioid overdose is rampant.
Certainly there are any number of public policies which have been and can be pursued to address this drug-use issue...just as there are any number of public policies which have been and can be pursued to address the B/W Performance Gap (GPA Gap, SAT Gap, HS Graduation Gap, College Enrollment Gap, College Graduation Gap, Employment Gap, Earnings Gap, etc etc.). But until the individuals that these public policies are trying to rescue actually want to be rescued....until the alcoholic actually wants to stop drinking & be saved....all the well-meaning social engineering efforts in the world cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.
At the very least, though, we can make a public choice to not enable those dysfunctional dependencies. And NOT eliminating or lowering performance standards in a horribly misguided effort to ‘fix’ outcome inequity would be massive step in that right direction.
Thank you for your well-considered writings, your engagement with reader comments, and your always excellent and to-the-point links, Mr. Roscoe. I look forward to more of your contributions.
I'm quite familiar, as you might guess, with the majority of Charles Murray's published works and public appearances over the last 5 decades. I highly recommend his "Real Education" for those, such as yourself, who fool themselves in thinking education reform can and will "close the gap." Murray is something of a hero to me, both for his courageous perseverance in the face of withering social and professional condemnation and isolation as well as the intellectual honesty evidenced in his relentless pursuit of the truth wherever it leads (see "conservative" Murray's "Coming Apart" bookended with "liberal" Robert Putnam's "Our Kids" as an example).
One small quibble. The persistence of achievement gaps suggest that there are limits to what can be accomplished through education reform. The most recent research I've seen says that achievement gaps are evident with children in kindergarten. Here's a link to a report titled "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Advanced Science and Mathematics Achievement During Elementary School:"
We analyzed a population-based cohort (N = 10,922) to investigate the onset and stability of racial and ethnic disparities in advanced (i.e., above the 90th percentile) science and mathematics achievement during elementary school as well as the antecedent, opportunity, and propensity factors that explained these disparities. About 13% to 16% of White students versus 3% to 4% of Black or Hispanic students displayed advanced science or mathematics achievement during kindergarten. The antecedent factor of family socioeconomic status and the propensity factors of student science, mathematics, and reading achievement by kindergarten consistently explained whether students displayed advanced science or mathematics achievement during first, second, third, fourth, or fifth grade. These and additional factors substantially or fully explained initially observed disparities between Black or Hispanic and White students in advanced science or mathematics achievement during elementary school. Economic and educational policies designed to increase racial and ethnic representation in STEM course taking, degree completion, and workforce participation may need to begin by elementary school.
All the above suggests that an accumulation of things that take place away from school may be more impactful than what happens at school. Derek Neal touched on some of these things in his analysis. I'll readily concede that I'm not aware of anybody who knows how to address these issues at scale. A good first step would be a rigorous, "no holds barred" analysis of why progress stalled out more than 30 years ago.
I suspect Brown vs. Board (school desegregation) had a great deal to do with the phenomenon you, Murray, and Neal point out. Prior to Brown, blacks students were largely educated by black teachers in either de jure or de facto segregated schools. Brown changed everything. More resources (facilities, instructional materials, and more capable teachers) were made available and eventually pushed through to reluctant, even rebellious, school districts specifically to improve the education of black kids. Additionally, the Cold War emphasis on education generally focused the nation on its schools, drawing even more resources and capable people into teaching—my mother was one, giving up her secretarial job to teach English while working toward her Master's degree at night school at Wayne State.
However, increasing black social dysfunction (think 1960s riots and 1970s school busing) drove whites (parents, kids, and teachers) from city schools to the suburbs. Chaos in the classrooms increased and learning cratered. Real estate values crashed as whites fled, significantly eroding the tax base to fund the schools. Looting of education budgets by cronies of the new political regime along with revolving-door superintendents begat decaying facilities, substandard teaching materials, and severely reduced extra-curricular clubs, field trips, and other educational and socialization activities. Eventually, the level of actual education hit rock bottom but the schools still produced "graduates", though ones largely unable to read, write, perform math, understand history and geography and all the other hallmarks of present day inner-city schools we all know so well in the USA.
I lived through this era and saw first-hand the destruction of our neighborhood elementary/middle school in Detroit in the 1960s. As "the line" of black expansion moved ever closer to our westside neighborhood, the number of black kids in our hitherto almost exclusively white school began to increase. Once the block-busting began in earnest and white flight hit its stride, the school went from less than 10% to 40% black in just two years in the late 1960s. The school grounds, hallways, and classrooms became a war zone with ritual humiliations, loud disruptive arguments, and dangerous fights between whites and blacks almost every day. I strongly resisted the predation of the black gangs (most whites gave up and gave in) and was suspended for fighting (back) multiple times in my final year there. When the principal showed my mother his collection of confiscated weapons (knives, sharpened screwdrivers, etc.) taken from students of both colors in recent months, my parents began planning our own family's escape from this nightmare. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late for me. A minor argument broke into a vicious fight between me and a black troublemaker. I disarmed him and left him bleeding and vowing revenge. The next day, he arranged for some black friends from a nearby high school to come to our school to settle things with me once and for all. By sheer luck, I saw them coming and hid in the school library which had a stout lockable door. The 2nd grade class there and the librarian were shocked, but I managed to ride things out until police arrived and school was cancelled for the afternoon. I never went back. I was whisked away to Florida to stay with my grandparents, and when the summer was over and I finally returned to Detroit, I found that our family had moved across the Detroit River to Windsor Ontario in Canada. After my searing experience in the Detroit school system over the last few years, being among the friendly Canadian kids (of all colors and origins) and experiencing the excellent education and extracurricular opportunities I received there was like I had died and gone to heaven.
The two .pdfs were very interesting. My eyes glazed over reading Neal's formulas, but he explained them well.
I was hampered by Neal and Murray saying further research could, or needed to, be done. And I didn't catch the significance Murray was pointing to of the tests getting easier. But that confirmed what I assumed. It'd be ridiculous to try to compare test scores with the one's I took. And it would appear another example of younger folks getting accommodated. TY again.
Thanks for your comments. There's ample evidence that the skills gap was closing until the late 1980's. Derek Neal at the University of Chicago did a study about this back in 2006. You can access it using this National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) link:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w11090
Here's the Abstract:
All data sources indicate that black-white skill gaps diminished over most of the 20th century, but black-white skill gaps as measured by test scores among youth and educational attainment among young adults have remained constant or increased in absolute value since the late 1980s. I examine the potential importance of discrimination against skilled black workers, changes in black family structures, changes in black household incomes, black-white differences in parenting norms, and education policy as factors that may contribute to the recent stability of black-white skill gaps. Absent changes in public policy or the economy that facilitate investment in black children, best case scenarios suggest that even approximate black-white skill parity is not possible before 2050, and equally plausible scenarios imply that the black-white skill gap will remain quite significant throughout the 21st century.
Charles Murray documented that the skills gap was closing until the late 1980's in his most recent book, "Facing Reality." There's a graphic on page 34 that suggests the gap would have essentially closed by 2015 if the trends had continued past the late 1980's. You can see an updated version of this graph on page 37 of the notes to the book that you can download by using this link:
https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/facing-reality/
Murray acknowledged Neal's work on page 32 of the notes.
Many of us think the gaps can be closed, but the narrative behind the root causes of these gaps has to change first because how you approach the problem is different if you think "bias" is the issue instead of "development." Professor Loury explores these competing narratives in his Manhattan Institute paper about the persistence of racial inequality. Use this link to access it:
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/why-does-racial-inequality-persist
Fascinating material. Appreciate the link to Neal's work.
So let us try to separate the forest from the trees.
And let us begin with the misnomer, 'skills gap'.
If I beat you in a race, over and over again, would your coach be talking about your 'skills gap'? That when it came time to see who was faster in the 100m.... would he suggest that your skills, per se, were deficient? Would your serial losses, both severe and consistent, be attributed to a running mechanics issue? That your sprint 'know-how' was not as highly developed as mine? That you need to improve your knee lift, your stride length, the angle at which you hold your arms, etc? And that the only thing that separates our finishes was your honing of these proficiencies?
In fact, yes, there may be something to that analysis (I'm reminded of that scene in Chariots of Fire)....but... that's not really the issue, is it? That's not what we've witnessed for generations...and that's not what's driving the increasingly insane elimination of standards. The issue is not 'skills' that need to be sharpened (because we have the entire Education-Industrial Complex eager to do that sharpening) ; it's flat out performance (especially since that performance for decades had been improving...until that improvement ceased)
The first thing, the very first thing, that any coach would immediately question looking at 60 years plus of poor finishes is EFFORT, effort as measured by practice and the amount of hard work the two runners are investing to improve. When race after race is decided not by 'tenths of seconds' at the tape but entire standard deviations...the problem is not skills, it's sweat, dedication, intensity, and work. The problem is attitude and the desire to translate that attitude into effort.
There is a massive difference between these two understandings.
Skills gaps are relatively easy to bridge. 'Sam Mussabini' can coach 'Harold Abrahams' to 'run on hot bricks' and find another 2 yards when he races Liddell...because Abrahams desperately wants to win and is willing to work to accomplish that goal. But we're not talking about 2 measly yards which separate Gold Medal finishes from Silver or Bronze. We’re talking about not qualifying to be on the same track.
Neal concludes his analysis by saying that although....“It is not clear why the process of black-white (performance) convergence appeared to stop around 1990”...it would certainly seem that those black-white performance differences we witness later in life seem to be directly related to differences in “early childhood experiences”. He then moves on to review possible ‘childhood intervention programs’. Why intervention? Because ‘early childhood experience’ is ‘in the home’ experience. ‘In the home’ is not an environment naturally subject to public policy. ‘In the home’ is private. It’s how children are being raised by their parents, outside public purview. It is where we, as a society, build the essential, personal foundation upon which our public education either succeeds or falls.
The reason Neal is discussing public policy intervention to improve ‘early childhood experience’ is because – at a very gross/macro level, child-rearing within the home is and has been failing, a failure that begins with an out-of-wedlock birthrate of +70%.
It's not ‘skills development’ which is deficient; it’s the prototypical Black Family...which is not so much a family as a single Mom, who either aborts her pregnancy (at a rate 3X higher than a normal population demographic would indicate) or brings to term a child who will be raised without a father, inside a culture which – per Neal – would seem to require early public intervention if the aggregate, ‘Fatherless Black Youth’ are to develop in such a way that public education succeeds and the performance gap narrows.
The question, of course: is that Home subject to, open to, public policy intervention in such a way that culture-wide dysfunction (as in the 70%+ out-of-wedlock birthrate) can be corrected?
I don’t know.
As a society we’ve been radically concerned for generations about the social costs of illegal drug use. And yet, despite all that concern, despite all the trillions of dollars spent on anti-drug programs and intervention programs, and ‘Just Say No’ (This is your brain on drugs...a mind is a terrible thing to waste!)...despite all that, death from opioid overdose is rampant.
Certainly there are any number of public policies which have been and can be pursued to address this drug-use issue...just as there are any number of public policies which have been and can be pursued to address the B/W Performance Gap (GPA Gap, SAT Gap, HS Graduation Gap, College Enrollment Gap, College Graduation Gap, Employment Gap, Earnings Gap, etc etc.). But until the individuals that these public policies are trying to rescue actually want to be rescued....until the alcoholic actually wants to stop drinking & be saved....all the well-meaning social engineering efforts in the world cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.
At the very least, though, we can make a public choice to not enable those dysfunctional dependencies. And NOT eliminating or lowering performance standards in a horribly misguided effort to ‘fix’ outcome inequity would be massive step in that right direction.
TY, M BDavi. Hard truths, well-expressed.
Thank you for your well-considered writings, your engagement with reader comments, and your always excellent and to-the-point links, Mr. Roscoe. I look forward to more of your contributions.
I'm quite familiar, as you might guess, with the majority of Charles Murray's published works and public appearances over the last 5 decades. I highly recommend his "Real Education" for those, such as yourself, who fool themselves in thinking education reform can and will "close the gap." Murray is something of a hero to me, both for his courageous perseverance in the face of withering social and professional condemnation and isolation as well as the intellectual honesty evidenced in his relentless pursuit of the truth wherever it leads (see "conservative" Murray's "Coming Apart" bookended with "liberal" Robert Putnam's "Our Kids" as an example).
Thanks for your comments.
One small quibble. The persistence of achievement gaps suggest that there are limits to what can be accomplished through education reform. The most recent research I've seen says that achievement gaps are evident with children in kindergarten. Here's a link to a report titled "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Advanced Science and Mathematics Achievement During Elementary School:"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00169862221128299?af=R&ai=1gvoi&mi=3ricys
Here's the Abstract:
Abstract
We analyzed a population-based cohort (N = 10,922) to investigate the onset and stability of racial and ethnic disparities in advanced (i.e., above the 90th percentile) science and mathematics achievement during elementary school as well as the antecedent, opportunity, and propensity factors that explained these disparities. About 13% to 16% of White students versus 3% to 4% of Black or Hispanic students displayed advanced science or mathematics achievement during kindergarten. The antecedent factor of family socioeconomic status and the propensity factors of student science, mathematics, and reading achievement by kindergarten consistently explained whether students displayed advanced science or mathematics achievement during first, second, third, fourth, or fifth grade. These and additional factors substantially or fully explained initially observed disparities between Black or Hispanic and White students in advanced science or mathematics achievement during elementary school. Economic and educational policies designed to increase racial and ethnic representation in STEM course taking, degree completion, and workforce participation may need to begin by elementary school.
All the above suggests that an accumulation of things that take place away from school may be more impactful than what happens at school. Derek Neal touched on some of these things in his analysis. I'll readily concede that I'm not aware of anybody who knows how to address these issues at scale. A good first step would be a rigorous, "no holds barred" analysis of why progress stalled out more than 30 years ago.
I suspect Brown vs. Board (school desegregation) had a great deal to do with the phenomenon you, Murray, and Neal point out. Prior to Brown, blacks students were largely educated by black teachers in either de jure or de facto segregated schools. Brown changed everything. More resources (facilities, instructional materials, and more capable teachers) were made available and eventually pushed through to reluctant, even rebellious, school districts specifically to improve the education of black kids. Additionally, the Cold War emphasis on education generally focused the nation on its schools, drawing even more resources and capable people into teaching—my mother was one, giving up her secretarial job to teach English while working toward her Master's degree at night school at Wayne State.
However, increasing black social dysfunction (think 1960s riots and 1970s school busing) drove whites (parents, kids, and teachers) from city schools to the suburbs. Chaos in the classrooms increased and learning cratered. Real estate values crashed as whites fled, significantly eroding the tax base to fund the schools. Looting of education budgets by cronies of the new political regime along with revolving-door superintendents begat decaying facilities, substandard teaching materials, and severely reduced extra-curricular clubs, field trips, and other educational and socialization activities. Eventually, the level of actual education hit rock bottom but the schools still produced "graduates", though ones largely unable to read, write, perform math, understand history and geography and all the other hallmarks of present day inner-city schools we all know so well in the USA.
I lived through this era and saw first-hand the destruction of our neighborhood elementary/middle school in Detroit in the 1960s. As "the line" of black expansion moved ever closer to our westside neighborhood, the number of black kids in our hitherto almost exclusively white school began to increase. Once the block-busting began in earnest and white flight hit its stride, the school went from less than 10% to 40% black in just two years in the late 1960s. The school grounds, hallways, and classrooms became a war zone with ritual humiliations, loud disruptive arguments, and dangerous fights between whites and blacks almost every day. I strongly resisted the predation of the black gangs (most whites gave up and gave in) and was suspended for fighting (back) multiple times in my final year there. When the principal showed my mother his collection of confiscated weapons (knives, sharpened screwdrivers, etc.) taken from students of both colors in recent months, my parents began planning our own family's escape from this nightmare. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late for me. A minor argument broke into a vicious fight between me and a black troublemaker. I disarmed him and left him bleeding and vowing revenge. The next day, he arranged for some black friends from a nearby high school to come to our school to settle things with me once and for all. By sheer luck, I saw them coming and hid in the school library which had a stout lockable door. The 2nd grade class there and the librarian were shocked, but I managed to ride things out until police arrived and school was cancelled for the afternoon. I never went back. I was whisked away to Florida to stay with my grandparents, and when the summer was over and I finally returned to Detroit, I found that our family had moved across the Detroit River to Windsor Ontario in Canada. After my searing experience in the Detroit school system over the last few years, being among the friendly Canadian kids (of all colors and origins) and experiencing the excellent education and extracurricular opportunities I received there was like I had died and gone to heaven.
TY, Sir Clifton. TYTY a *lot.*
The two .pdfs were very interesting. My eyes glazed over reading Neal's formulas, but he explained them well.
I was hampered by Neal and Murray saying further research could, or needed to, be done. And I didn't catch the significance Murray was pointing to of the tests getting easier. But that confirmed what I assumed. It'd be ridiculous to try to compare test scores with the one's I took. And it would appear another example of younger folks getting accommodated. TY again.