Every year, when the National Center for Education Statistics publishes the Nation’s Report Card, it shows black students score well below their white counterparts. For example, in 2019, black students scored 30 points below white students in math, and in 2022, they scored 22 points behind in reading. Other data show that black students consistently have about a half-letter grade lower grade point average than white students.
For Democrats, the answer to this discrepancy is easy: racism. For example, the Annie E. Casey Foundation says black students are more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts, and a police presence at a school can lower student achievement, which disproportionately affects black students since police are more likely to be at schools that black students attend.
But does racism really explain why black students routinely underperform white students? Not according to a new report published by the University of Virginia.
What Democrats refuse to admit when it comes to education (or crime or employment, for that matter) is that family formation matters. As much as the Democratic Party, which is overwhelmingly made up of and run by single women, denies it, children, especially boys, need fathers in the home. And there is no institution on the planet better at assuring there is a father in the home of a child than marriage.
According to the data compiled by researchers at UVA, black children with a father in the home are actually more likely (90%) to get As and Bs than their white counterparts (85%). However, the effect of a missing father in the home is harsher for black children. While 63% of white children in homes without a father still manage to get As and Bs, just 41% of black children without a father in the home manage the same achievement.
If black children with fathers in the home get better grades than white children with a father in the home, then why do black children overall fail to match the academic achievement of white children?
MARRIAGE IS THE SOLUTION TO THE FERTILITY CRISIS
Unfortunately, black children are just far more likely to grow up in a home without a father. According to the Census Bureau, while 62% of white children live with married parents, just 23% of black children do.
Instead of pouring money into schools attempting to close an achievement gap that really begins at home, perhaps Democrats should start working with Republicans to identify policies that make it easier for Americans of all racial backgrounds to get and stay married.