Students Narrow Race Gap With Pre-Test Pep Talk

My editor shot me this eye-opening article he found over at Cognitive Daily. I think you all should know about it. The report details a little-reported study from last year which demonstrated that black students who participated in fifteen-minute affirmations prior to taking tests, narrowed the "achievement gap" on test results when measured against their white counterparts.

At every performance level, this chart (adjusted for covariates) shows that black students who completed the 15-minute affirmation exercise got better grades than students who did not (control). Interestingly, there was no similar effect for white students, suggesting that the effect of the exercise may have been to remove the handicapping of those students due to racial stereotyping. Even this short intervention asking students to reflect on their personal values appears to cause a significant effect. Source

I am not surprised. I think efforts like KIPP Academy show that if you take even the worst performing students, set high expectations for them and support these students in meeting their goals, they will succeed. The power of mindset cannot be overstated when it comes to achieving personal success. Far too many young black students, fall prey to the "you ain't nothin' and you always gonna be nothin'" chorus that too often engulfs them. I have heard this exact phrase said to children: sometimes by parents, sometimes by teachers. And I know that If you expect to fail, you will fail. But if we adults will teach young people to connect with their inherent value, bestowed unto them by God alone, then that will be at least one tool they will have to build their own success.

Of course affirmations cannot take the place of hard work, discipline and persistence.

70 percent of African American students benefited from the intervention. The chances of this effect occurring due solely to chance are less than 1 in 5,000. But why would the effect of such a short exercise be so dramatic? The authors speculate that the benefits are cumulative: when students faced challenges shortly after they participated in the exercise, those who had reflected on their values performed slightly better. This gave them the confidence they needed to do better the next time a challenge was faced. Each successive success prepared students to face future challenges; in the end, this all added up to better performance. [ ]

Does this study demonstrate that only small interventions are necessary to solve the racial disparity in educational achievement? No. Many black students are in districts that receive less funding than white students, or have parents with less education than white students. For these kids, much more is required than a quick exercise. And these results don't appear to be as effective for the lowest-performing students in this group. But when other factors are equal, it may not take much to eliminate entirely the effects of racial stereotyping for many children. Source

Black Enterprises Top Schools For Black Students

10) Wesleyan University (Middleton, CT)
Tuition and fees: $36,806
Room and Board: $10,130

Wesleyan was one of the first highly selective schools to actively recruit black and other minority students, and in the class entering in 1965 had the first substantial group of minority students, 14 young men -- 13 Blacks and one Latino.

9) University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
Tuition and fees: $35,916
Room and Board: $10,208

According to the university, Penn is America's first university and is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.

8) Columbia University (New York, NY)
Tuition and fees: $36,997
Room and Board: $9,098

Columbia University is home to the Pulitzer Prize, which has rewarded outstanding achievement in journalism, literature and music for over a century. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism was founded by Joseph Pulitzer.

7) Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
Tuition and fees: $34,800
Room and Board: $10,808

Stanford offers strong programs in business management and engineering because of its close location to Silicon Valley. Many Stanford alumni have founded companies associated with technology, such as HP and Google.

6) Hampton University (Hampton, VA)
Tuition and fees: $14,818
Room and Board: $6,746

Under what is now called the Emancipation Oak tree, Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes on September 17, 1861, in defiance of a Virginia law against teaching slaves, free blacks and mulattos to read or write, a law which had cut her own education short years earlier.

5) Spelman College (Atlanta, GA)
Tuition and fees: $18,615
Room and Board: $9,200

Spelman has amassed an endowment fund of over $291 million, and is ranked currently at 75 in the 2008 U.S. News and World Report ranking of all U.S. liberal arts colleges. The 2008 U.S. News and World Report also ranked Spelman first among Historically Black Colleges and/or Universities.

4) Harvard University (Boston, MA)
Tuition and fees: $34,998
Room and Board: $10,662

Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is also the first and oldest corporation in North America.

3) North Carolina A&T State University (Greensboro, NC)
Tuition and fees: $17,315
Room and Board: $7,370

On February 1, 1960 four distinguished freshmen sparked the civil rights movement of the south. Ezell Blair (Jibreel Khazan), Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond "sat-in" at an all white eating establishment (Woolworth's)and demanded equal service at the lunch counter.

2) Howard University (Washington, DC)
Tuition and fees: $14,020
Room and Board: $6,976

Howard University is the number-one producer of African American Ph.D.s in the United States. It is often known as the Black Harvard.

1) Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, FL)
Tuition and fees: $14,465
Room and Board: $5,492

In the fall of 1997, FAMU was selected as the TIME Magazine-Princeton Review "College of the Year" and was cited in 1999 by Black Issues in Higher Education for awarding more baccalaureate degrees to African-Americans than any institutions in the nation.