THE AMERICAN SCHOOL DILEMMA - RACE AND SCHOLASTIC PERFORMANCE

Although the education of minority youth in America has traditionally been assimilationist in character, some recent critics have questioned assimilation as a goal for the education of African Americans. This r esearch addresses this issue by looking at how race and the racial com position of schools are related to academic achievement. The study use s data from Louisiana's Graduation Exit Examination, an achievement te st administered to all public high school students in the state. It fi nds thar there is a substantial gap between the test scores of white a nd African American students, which exists even when we control for va rious indicators of students' involvement with school, family socioeco nomic level, family structure, and school racial composition. Notably, this gap is smallest in predominantly white schools. The reason for t his appears to be that African American students show the highest scor es in predominantly white schools.