#175 The expectation gap

It seems there is a significant gap between achievement of white students and black and/or Hispanic students, but the gap between white and Asian is even larger.

Clarence Page writes commenting on the book, "No excuses, closing the racial gap" by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom: "Among the most intriguing possible reasons for this disparity is an intriguing group difference in the way students measure their family's "trouble threshold," according to one study that the Thernstroms cite. The "trouble threshold" is the lowest grade that students think they can receive before their parents go volcanic with anger and start clamping down on TV time, etc. In the survey by Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University social scientist, published in his 1996 book, "Beyond the Classroom," most of the black and Hispanic students surveyed said they could avoid trouble at home as long as their grades stayed above C-minus.

Most of the whites, by contrast, said their parents would give them a hard time if their children came home with anything less than a B-minus.

By contrast, most of the Asian students, whether immigrant or native-born, said that their parents would be upset if they brought home anything less than an A-minus."

When I was in school in the 1950s and 1960s it was MY expectation that mattered. It hovered around an A minus. I wanted A’s, but knew it might not happen in math or the sciences, my weak and low interest areas. My parents expected at least a B. So worrying about what my parents might say was just never an issue--my expectations were higher than theirs! I once got a C in tennis at Manchester College, but no one cared about sports except as it affected a GPA. If I suspected I was not going to do well, I dropped the class. But I averaged about an A- in high school and college.