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

Inequality of Schooling 259
To what extent are they not being taught because those who are
in charge of teaching them do not believe that they can learn,
do not expect that they can learn, and do not relate to them in
ways that are conducive to their learning (p. 183)
This is a currently popular hypothesis, but I can find no
objective evidence that supports it. It is not sufficient merely to
note that there are some teachers and schools which have undesirable
attitudes toward minority children and provide an inferior
educational environment for such children. We must examine
those schools which have taken pains to give Negro children every
advantage that is provided for the white children, and in which
the teachers, both white and Negro, have been specially selected
for their dedication and favorable attitudes toward minority pupils.
Where these conditions exist, has there been found an appreciably
smaller achievement gap between the races I believe there has
been some reduction in the achievement gap in the California
schools in which I have collected data and where there has been
a concerted effort to give every advantage to Negro children. It
is under these conditions that the scholastic achievement difference
is about 30 percent less than the average difference in intelligence,
when intelligence is measured by very non-scholastic, non-verbal
tests. There is no reason to believe that good teaching and good
educational facilities will not improve Negro scholastic performance.1
But there is equally no evidence to support the belief that
the Negro-white difference that still persists under these conditions
is a result of some subtle, invisible discrimination by teachers
whose attitudes and expectations depress Negro performance.
NOTE
1. One critic of this interpretation has argued that unless the relative
achievement gap can be shown to decrease during the school years,
more parsimonious explanations would involve differentiated selection
(e.g., drop-out rates) of students or, more likely, the presence
of non-IQ variance in scholastic achievement.