Charles V. Willie

The Contextual Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Student Achievement Test Scores by Race

This study seeks to understand the achievement behavior of Black and White students in poverty-concentrated, socioeconomically mixed, and affluent-concentrated school contexts. Holding socioeconomic status constant, the proportion of Black and White students performing above the national norm on the Metropolitan Achievement Test was computed and analyzed for each of these three learning environments. The proportion of students performing above the national norm is higher in affluent-concentrated schools than in poverty-concentrated schools for students in both racial groups. However, the 36 percentage points that separated Black and White populations in favor of Whites on the achievement test for all elementary and middle school combined was more or less constant in high, middle, and low socioeconomic schools, suggesting that the test score gap by race is as much a function of the test and its construction as it is a function of characteristics of the test takers.