The Black-White-Other Test Score Gap: Academic Achievement Among Mixed Race Adolescents

*Achievement Gap This paper describes the achievement patterns of a sample of 1,492 multiracial high school students and examines how their achievement fits into existing theoretical models that explain monoracial differences in achievement. These theoretical models include status attainment, parenting style, oppositional culture, and educational attitudes. The results replicate previous findings about the racial hierarchy of academic achievement among monoracial youth and demonstrate the similarity of the hierarchy within biracial groups: part-black and part-Latino youth fare poorly while part-White and part-Asian youth achieve the most. Furthermore, multiracial students who'self-identify as black or Latino achieve less in school than those who identify as White or Asian. However, unlike previous findings, this paper shows that racial identity and experiences of racism are not strong factors in explaining the achievement of multiracial or monoracial students. Instead, the school achievement of multiracial students is related to som