Educability-and-Group-Differences-1973-by-Arthur-Robert-Jensen

256 Educability and Group Differences
Taking all these results together, one implication stands out
above all: That schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s
achievement that is independent of his background and general
social context; and that this very lack of an independent effect
means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home,
neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to
become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at
the end of school. For equality of educational opportunity
through the schools must imply a strong effect of schools that
is independent of the child’s immediate social environment,
and that strong independent effect is not present in American
schools.
In an analysis of relationships between (a) minority enrolment,
(b) IQ, and (c) reading scores, on the one hand, and (d) pupil
expenditure, (e) teacher salary, ( / ) pupil/teacher ratios, and (g)
number of school administrators, on the other hand, in 191 school
systems in California, it was found that the school-related variables
have negligible correlations with IQ and reading scores, while
percentage of minority enrolment has very high negative correlations
with the school’s mean IQ and reading level. At the same
time, there is a slight, but non-significant, positive correlation
between minority enrolment and the indices of school quality
(Jensen, 1971a).
The fact is that the achievement level in a school is predictable
from a number of demographic characteristics over which the
school itself has no control whatsoever. Thorndike (1951), for
example, correlated average IQ and an average scholastic achievement
index (based on half a million children) with twenty-four
census variables for a wide range of communities, large and small,
urban and rural. Eleven of the correlations were significant at the
1 percent level. Census variables showing the highest correlation
with IQ and achievement were educational level of the adult
population (0-43), home ownership (0-39), quality and cost of
housing (0-33), proportion of native-born whites (0*28), rate of
female employment (0-26), and proportion of professional workers
(0*28). In a multiple correlation these census variables predict IQ
and achievement between 0-55 and 0-60.
Statistics based on all schools (over 900) in New York City show
a strong negative correlation between pupil expenditures and