1980s African American Education

Amount of Blacks in college

     1980: Impressive 718,000
     1987: Growing more slowly, 855,000
*1988: Sliding back down to 785,000
*In 1988, the enrollment of black men declined, while it increased for women. There were 179,000 black women in college, then black men.

Percentage of highs school graduates going to college

     1960-1970: Males exceeded women
     1980’s: women overtake men and never lost the lead

Popular concentration in education in the 1980’s

1981: business and management were the most popular of all black bachelor’s degree recipients. 13,325 blacks earned a bachelor’s degree in business and management (40% earned in historically black colleges).

The Black and White Gap

"The average scores of black students have remained well below those of whites, and at age 17, the reading achievement of black students was lower last year than it was in 1988—a depressing reversal of the gains made over the previous two decades," Michael T. Nettles, the vice chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, said at a press conference held here late last month to release the results. The independent panel oversees National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

In just about every age group and in every subject, the test-score gap between white and African-American students has grown since 1986, reversing a trend in which the discrepancies decreased from the time the exams were first given in 1969, 1971, and 1973. Since the mid-1980s, gaps in several subjects and age groups have grown by statistically significant amounts.

Resegregation occurring again

“Studies finds the causes for resegregation stemming from a number of social and political factors: a series of court rulings beginning in the late 1980s that reversed many of the desegregation orders, the growing isolation of whites in suburban schools, and the increasing segregation of blacks and Hispanics in suburban schools.”

Study suggest that students do better with same race teachers

Both black and white children score higher on mathematics and reading tests when their teachers are the same race as they are, a study of 6,000 Tennessee schoolchildren suggests.