What causes the achievement gap? The Voldemort View

The View That Must Not Be Spoken is getting a bit more purchase these days.

Steven Pinker, on IQ:

Question: Thus, I think IQ tests merely measure a pedestrian or functionary level of intellect. What are your thoughts on its efficacy in measuring real human intelligence? ….

Pinker: I think you’re wrong about IQ tests in general. They’ve been shown to predict (statistically, of course) a vast array of outcomes that one would guess require intelligence, including success at school, choice of intellectually demanding professions, income (in a modern economy), tenure and publications in academia, and other indicators, together with lower crime rates, lower infant mortality, lower rates of divorce, and other measures of well-being. The idea that IQ tests don’t predict anything in the real world is one of the great myths of the intellectuals.

…. It’s an empirical fact – massively and repeatedly demonstrated – that people who do well on tests of verbal intelligence also do well on tests of spatial and quantitative intelligence, and vice-versa. The correlation is nowhere near perfect (some people really are better at math, others with words), but it is undoubtedly a positive correlation. General intelligence in this sense is a real phenomenon.

(emphasis mine)

Average African American IQ is 1SD below average white IQ, average Hispanic IQ a little less than 1SD below. Asian groups with the highest mean IQ are slightly higher than the average white IQ. I imagine if we went out and tested IQ scores by income, after controlling for race, we would see that mean IQ raises with income.

The Voldemort View: Mean differences in group IQs are the most likely explanation for the academic achievement gap in racial and SES groups.

That opinion could get a person fired. It could particularly get a teacher fired. Pinker has tenure, legitimacy, and fame. I’m 0 for 3.

Why is it so risky? In an excellent essay, Affirmative Distraction, Shelby Steele once offered his idea of the real motivation for affirmative action:

It is important to remember that the original goal of affirmative action was to achieve two redemptions simultaneously. As society gave a preference to its former victims in employment and education, it hoped to redeem both those victims and itself. When America—the world’s oldest and most unequivocal democracy—finally acknowledged in the 1960s its heartless betrayal of democracy where blacks were concerned, the loss of moral authority was profound. In their monochrome whiteness, the institutions of this society—universities, government agencies, corporations— became emblems of the evil America had just acknowledged. Affirmative action has always been more about the restoration of legitimacy to American institutions than about the uplift of blacks and other minorities.

Steele is not thinking of IQ here (in fact, I think he holds that culture is the cause of the gap), but I believe that the rush to crucify anyone who points out the possible role of IQ in our society is likewise about institutional legitimacy. The elites, broadly defined, can’t accept an intelligence gap–particularly a racial one–so they have to constantly push for equal representation in any job but their own (mild sarcasm, there–but only mild). I think that many elites would argue that America can’t accept that gap, but at this point–speaking of gaps–the chasm between what our business, media, political and intellectual leaders want and the average American wants means that the elites don’t speak for America any more.

My opinion about the achievement gap is founded on the fact of consistently measured mean racial IQ differences. Alas, as Pinker points out, most people are completely ignorant of this fact. Thanks in no small part to determination to avoid any mention of IQ in public discourse, most people think that the difference in average racial IQs—a well-established fact—is a bogus pseduofactoid straight out of the Big Would-Otherwise-be-Black Book of Racist White Folks. So simply mentioning the IQ difference carries the risk of the Racist Scum label.

I have no idea why the difference exists. I only know that it does exist, and that simplistic explanations (legacy of racism, culture of poverty, low expectations, enrichment activities, lack of Head Start) have largely been eliminated. I suspect, but don’t know, that IQ is a combination of innate characteristics and environment broadly defined (plenty of iodine, not getting dropped on the head, not being subjected to drug use in utero) and hope, but think it unlikely, that a rich cognitive environment can have some effect. But the cause is largely irrelevant, in my view, and doesn’t make any difference to educational policy.

The Voldemortean nature of this opinion has relaxed slightly in recent years. While no media outlet would ever acknowledge the IQ facts without recasting them as opinions, more and more scientists and opinion makers at the top of the heap are able to mention this–gingerly–without risking public dismemberment. I do mean “recent years”; just four years ago, William Saletan was roundly and publicly slapped for Liberal Creationism, in which he simply stated the facts. The resulting beatdown traumatized Saletan so badly that he now calls for complete elimination of racial categorization of student achievement (Race and Test Scores).

Only slightly better, though. So if someone wanted to make trouble for me, they could simply demand that I be taken to task for “racist statements about IQ differences”, and the crucifixion would begin.

It wouldn’t matter that the racial IQ averages are fact, not opinion. It wouldn’t matter that this fact doesn’t preclude people of all races having the entire gamut of IQs. Most of all, it wouldn’t matter that the IQ differences and the achievement gap are about groups, not individuals.

My top students are white, Hispanic, black, and Asian. My weakest students are white, Hispanic, and Asian. (No, I didn’t forget a group there.) Like all teachers, I don’t care about groups. I teach individuals. And the average IQ of a racial group doesn’t say squat about the cognitive abilities and the thousand other variables that make up each individual.

I dedicate a good deal of my spare time each spring to helping low income under-represented minorities to improve their college admission test scores, and I’m very good at it. Every year, some 8-10 kids escape remedial math and English, saving time and money and dramatically improving their chances of graduation. I teach at a Title I school and am passionately committed to helping every one of my students negotiate the crazy world that educational policy has made of public education and, not incidentally, become more competent at math.

But none of that would matter if someone decided to make an issue of my opinions in this matter. A whole bunch of people who haven’t ever done a thing personally to improve educational outcomes, regardless of gaps, would demand I be fired and stripped of my credentials simply because I think cognitive ability has a lot to do with academic outcomes.

It’s a weird world we live in.