The Attitude-Achievement Paradox Among Black Adolescents

Abstract

Many black youths and adults express a high regard for education even though their academic performance is poor. Utilizing a sample of 1,193 high school seniors, this article resolves the attitude-achievement paradox by demonstrating that attitudes toward education are multidimensional. The first dimension is composed of abstract attitudes that reflect the dominant ideology. The second dimension is composed of concrete attitudes that inform achievement behavior. Unlike abstract attitudes, these concrete attitudes are rooted in life experience in which educational credentials may not be fairly rewarded by the opportunity structure. The paradox of poor grades but positive attitudes toward education among blacks vanishes when concrete, rather than abstract, attitudes are related to high school grades. Substantively, the study reported in this article illustrates how race and class, which are large components of the social context of achievement, influence school outcomes. Education has had a special place in the hearts and minds of black Americans since the era of Reconstruction. Although public schooling was not widely available until over 100 years after the demise of slavery, blacks held fast to their faith in education as one of the few institutions that could lift them from poverty and oppression. Even so, the rhetorical importance that blacks place on education has rarely been matched by their scholastic performance. This research examines an important issue in the education of blacks, specifically the paradox of consistently positive attitudes toward education, coupled with frequently poor academic achievement. In his 1966 report, Coleman and his colleagues noted that black students held highly favorable attitudes toward education irrespective of their performance: Negroes . . . give a picture of students who report high interest in academic achievement, but whose