The Racial Achievement Gap and the War on Meritocracy

Lower standards for blacks means more mediocre teachers and doctors in black communities

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"only 39% of Miami-Dade County fourth-graders are proficient in reading"

"By eighth grade the number drops to 31%, and math scores are just as bad"

"The U.S. Education Department reported last year that in 2022 the average reading score for black fourth-graders in New York on the National Assessment of Educational Progress trailed that of white fourth graders by 29 points. This “performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1998,” the report added."

"One defense of racial preferences in education for black students is that recipients, including those who go into teaching, are more likely to work in low-income minority communities after graduation. That’s true, but is it what economically disadvantaged students really need, more second-rate teachers?"

"late economist Walter William . . . was appalled that many of his academic colleagues were holding their black students to lower standards. “There was no more effective way to mislead black students and discredit whatever legitimate achievements they might make than giving them phony grades and ultimately fraudulent diplomas,”"

"Medical students in all 50 states must pass a licensure exam before they can practice. The exam has three parts, and Step 1 is administered at the end of the second year of medical school. It measures your grasp of basic science topics—anatomy, biology, biochemistry, pharmacology—and is highly predictive of how you will perform in medical school going forward."

"Three years ago, representatives of the nation’s leading medical groups voted to scrap numerical scores and report the results of the Step 1 exam as pass/fail."

Stanley Goldfarb, an academic physician and former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school . . . [said] “The solution to the fact that white students score better on the exam was to eliminate reporting scores,”

"Medical schools have been pressured to relax admission standards for diversity purposes, which has led to the relaxation of grading standards and licensure requirements."