ABSTRACT
In 1999, The College Board released “Reaching the Top: A Report of the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement.”2 While the title suggests an analysis of the positive achievement of students of color, the content is less sanguine, reporting in detail the deep racial gap in test scores. One finding is particularly startling and motivates the research in this chapter: black students with college educated parents score lower on standardized tests than white youth whose parents did not graduate from high school. While it is well-documented that controls for family characteristics do not fully account for the racial test score gap, the chasm represented by this stark finding demands a deeper interrogation of the meaning of family background for blacks and whites and its influence on academic outcomes.
