Study: Black-White Achievement Gap Has ‘Political Foundations’ - Higher Education

Study: Black-White Achievement Gap Has ‘Political Foundations’ - Higher Education: In a newly-published political science journal article, a Baylor University professor and a Notre Dame graduate student report that state policymaker attention to teacher quality tends to be highly responsive to low high school graduation rates among White students, but not so in reaction to low graduation rates among African-American students.

In addition, the study seeks to uncover “a possible mechanism behind this unequal responsiveness by examining the factors that motivate White public opinion about education reform and [finds] racial influences there as well.”

“Taken together, we uncover evidence that the persisting achievement gap between White and African American students has distinctively political foundations,” assert co-authors Dr. Patrick Flavin, a Baylor University assistant political science professor, and Michael Hartney, a University of Notre Dame political science Ph.D. candidate, in the article, “The Political Foundations of the Black-White Education Achievement Gap.”