How Teachers and Schools Contribute to

Racial Differences in the Realization of

Academic Potential
TINA WILDHAGEN
Smith College

Background/Context: The fulfillment of academic potential is an underdeveloped area of

inquiry as it relates to explaining racial differences in academic outcomes. Examining this
issue is important for addressing not only differences in the typical outcomes for African
American and White students but also the severe underrepresentation of African American
students among the highest achieving students. Whereas other studies have operationalized
lost academic potential as unfulfilled expectations for educational attainment, this study
takes a different approach, measuring whether students earn higher or lower grades than the
grades predicted by earlier tests of academic skills. Students whose grades are equal to or
exceed those predicted by their earlier test scores are said to have fulfilled their academic potential, whereas those whose grades are lower than predicted have not realized their potential.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study finds that African
American high school students are less likely than their White peers to realize their academic
potential. The analyses test several explanations for the racial gap in the realization of academic potential, focusing on the students themselves, their teachers, and their schools.
Research Design: This study uses hierarchical linear modeling to analyze data from the
Education Longitudinal Study of 2002.
Conclusions/Recommendations: The results suggest that teachers perceive African
American students as exerting less classroom effort than White students, which accounts for
a substantial proportion of the racial gap in unrealized academic potential, even with several student characteristics held constant. At the school level, there are larger racial gaps in
unrealized academic potential in segregated schools and schools with strict disciplinary climates. Strikingly, the negative effect of strict disciplinary climate exists net of students own
receipt of disciplinary actions. That is, the negative association between strict disciplinary
climate and the realization of academic potential for African American students applies to

Teachers College Record Volume 114, 070303, July 2012, 27 pages

Copyright by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161-4681
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Teachers College Record, 114, 070303 (2012)

African American students regardless of whether they themselves have been in trouble at
school. This study reveals that characteristics of schools that lack immediately obvious racial
implications, such as a schools approach to student discipline, may be just as harmful as
overtly racialized inequality within and between schools.

An important element of closing mean differences between African

American and White students in college matriculation and in the academic criteria used in college admissions decisions (e.g., grades, advanced
coursework) is to identify and explain unrealized academic potential
among African American high school students. This study focuses on
grades, an important criterion for college admissions, as indicators of
unrealized academic potential among high school seniors.
I use nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal
Study of 2002 (ELS) to assess the extent to which behavioral and attitudinal differences between African American and White high school students, and differences in how teachers perceive the two groups, account
for the racial gap in the realization of academic potential. I also examine
the extent to which this racial difference varies across high schools, focusing on the roles of school disciplinary climate, segregation, and racial
inequality in access to advanced coursework.
The fulfillment of academic potential is an underdeveloped area of
inquiry as it relates to explaining racial differences in academic outcomes. Examining this issue is important for addressing not only differences in the typical outcomes for African American and White students
but also the severe underrepresentation of African American students
among the highest achieving students. If it is the case that African
American students are more likely than White students to possess stocks
of unfulfilled academic potential, African Americans will remain underrepresented in the upper tail of academic achievement distributions,
which will perpetuate African American underrepresentation in
Americas most selective colleges and universities.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON UNREALIZED ACADEMIC POTENTIAL
AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS
Most previous research that has tackled this issue of unrealized academic
potential has operationalized lost potential as it relates to students educational plans. The idea is that students whose educational expectations
cool out over a number of years have not realized their potential, resulting in losses for both those individual students and society as a whole
(Hanson, 1994). Using the nationally representative High School and
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Beyond survey, Hanson (1994) measured changes in students educational plans and whether students fulfilled their expectations over the 6
years following high school, defining those who lowered their expectations over time or did not fulfill plans of earning bachelors degrees as
having lost talent. Interestingly, Hanson found that White students are
more likely to experience lost talent in the form of scaled-back educational expectations than are non-White students. Studies by Trusty and
Harris (Trusty, 2000; Trusty & Harris, 1999) yielded similar findings
using the nationally representative National Education Longitudinal
Study.
Although it is important to know the extent of and explanations for
unfulfilled plans for educational attainment, we also need to focus on
unfulfilled academic achievement. Indeed, relying only on unfulfilled educational plans to measure racial differences in unrealized potential or
lost talent may lead to underestimating the stock of unfulfilled potential
among African American students. Among African American and White
students who realize their plans for educational attainment, African
American students still could possess a larger stock of lost potential for
academic achievement. In this study, then, I shift the question from Do
White and African American students differ on the extent to which they
translate plans for postsecondary education into educational attainment? to Do White and African American students differ on the extent
to which they translate academic aptitude into academic achievement?
This study widens our view of the extent of unrealized academic potential among African American students compared with White students by
examining unfulfilled academic achievement rather than unfulfilled
plans for educational attainment. Specifically, I examine the extent to
which students senior-year grades fall short of the grades predicted by
their earlier achievement test scores.
GRADES AS A MEASURE OF UNREALIZED ACADEMIC POTENTIAL
Scholars have dedicated an incredible amount of energy to explaining
racial differences in standardized test scores (Jencks & Phillips, 1998;
Magnuson & Waldfogel, 2008), but as grades become an increasingly
important criterion for college admissions, we need to pay equal attention to racial differences in grades. For example, with its Top Ten law,
the state of Texas has made making good grades in high school a sufficient condition for acceptance at any of the states public universities,
guaranteeing a seat for any student who graduates in the top 10% of his
or her high school class. In addition, according to the National Center for
Fair and Open Testing (2010), more than 800 colleges and universities
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have made SAT I or ACT scores an optional component of students applications for admission.
This study finds that African American students earn grades that are
lower than earlier test scores predicted, whereas Whites earn higher-thanpredicted grades. In the following sections, I discuss potential explanations for this phenomenon, focusing first on the characteristics of
students and teachers perceptions of students, followed by a discussion
of the potential role of schools.
SCHOOL BEHAVIORS AND ATTITUDES AND THE REALIZATION OF
ACADEMIC POTENTIAL
Research suggests that whereas African American students score lower on
measures of proschool behaviors, such as time spent on homework,
White students tend to hold less positive attitudes about school
(Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey, 1998). Thus, to the extent that proschool
behaviors and attitudes are positively related to the realization of academic potential, racial differences in school behaviors and attitudes should
cancel each other out as explanations for racial differences in realizing
academic potential:
Hypothesis 1: Taken together, mean differences in school attitudes and
school behaviors between White and African American students do not
account for the racial difference in realizing academic potential.
Once students self-reported behaviors and attitudes are held constant,
teachers perceptions of students engagement may still contribute to
racial differences in unrealized academic potential. This could occur
either because teachers are less likely to recognize the school engagement of African American students than White students, or because
teachers misperceive African American students engagement as misbehavior.
Research demonstrates that some teachers misrecognize African
American students academic alacrity as misbehavior (Ferguson, 2000;
Lewis, 2003; Ogbu, 2003). For example, Lewis observed an African
American student sent from a classroom for pumping his arms in a raise
the roof motion in celebration of giving a correct answer. This example
illustrates the argument that schools and school officials hold all students
to the same White, middle-class behavioral norms, even though not all
students operate according to these norms (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1990; Lewis). Ogbu argued that these kinds of cross-cultural

TCR, 114, 070303 Racial Differences

misunderstandings contributed to the disproportionate discipline problems of Black students (p. 139).
As key allocators of educational resources and rewards, teachers play a
crucial role in the translation of student ability into academic achievement. Once students self-reported school behaviors and attitudes are
held constant, teachers perceptions of students classroom effort should
indicate the extent to which teachers recognize students proschool orientations. If teachers perceptions of classroom effort are related to racial
differences in the realization of academic potential independent of students reports of their own behaviors and attitudes, this is consistent with
the argument that teachers misrecognition of African American students
as less engaged with school contributes to racial differences in realized
academic potential. The analysis tests the following hypothesis related to
teachers perceptions:
Hypothesis 2: Controlling for students self-reported school attitudes
and behaviors, teachers perceptions of students classroom effort account
for a portion of the racial difference in the realization of academic potential.
SCHOOLS AND THE REALIZATION OF ACADEMIC POTENTIAL
Although student characteristics likely explain some portion of the difference in unfulfilled academic potential between Whites and African
Americans, schools probably play some role in the process as well.
Indeed, Downey, von Hippel, and Broh (2004) found that test score gaps
between young White and African American students widened during
the school year but not during the summer months, suggesting that
schools play a role in racial differences in academic outcomes independent of family and neighborhood contexts. This article focuses on two
school characteristics in particular: the disciplinary climate of the school
and the racial gap in Advanced Placement (AP) enrollment. On one
hand, the racial gap in AP course enrollment provides an explicit measure of school-level racial inequality by measuring the extent to which a
schools academic opportunity structure is racialized. On the other hand,
disciplinary climate is a characteristic that does not have immediately
apparent racial implications. Typically, school discipline is thought of as
a racialized process only when disciplinary actions disproportionately target students of color, which research suggests is often the case (Arum,
2003; Noguera, 1995). However, this study investigates whether strict disciplinary climates are detrimental to the realization of academic potential for African American students, regardless of any racially
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disproportionate delivery of punishments.1 As I will discuss, this could

occur because school disciplinary problems may be read through a racialized lens by students, teachers, and administrators. One purpose of the
school-level analysis, then, is to test the possibility that a school characteristic without immediately obvious racial implications can harm African
American students academic progress relative to White students
progress to the same extent as (or more than) a racialized academic
opportunity structure within the school.
Research indicates that African American students are more likely than
Whites to attend schools that focus on behavioral compliance and
deportment (Carter, 2003; Kelly, 2010; Tyson, 2003). Thus, disciplinary
climate may affect the extent to which African American students fulfill
their academic potential relative to Whites because African American students are more likely to attend schools that focus more on discipline
than, say, critical thinking. However, it could also be the case that African
American students are affected to a greater extent by strict disciplinary
school climates than are White students. In other words, the same school
characteristic, disciplinary climate, may stymie African American students progress to a greater extent than for White students.
African American students could be differentially affected by strict disciplinary climates at school because their own behaviors are more
strongly affected by attending such schools or because school officials are
more likely to perceive African American students as problem students
in such schools. In an ethnographic study of an elementary school,
Ferguson (2000) found that African American students, particularly
African American boys, tend to be perceived by teachers as troublemakers who may even harbor nefarious intentions. Ferguson argued that
African American students transgressions are made to take on a sinister,
intentional, fully conscious tone that is stripped of any element of childish navet (p. 83).
Because school violence and disciplinary problems are often thought
of as urban (read Black) problems, harsh disciplinary environments
likely carry a more consequential symbolic meaning for African
American than White students (Noguera, 1995). These racialized symbolic meanings mean that all African American students, not just students who find themselves targets of disciplinary actions, may be
negatively affected by strict disciplinary climates. Thus, the analysis will
hold constant the number of times that each student has been the target
of disciplinary actions by the school.
Hypothesis 3: Strict disciplinary climates are especially harmful to the
realization of academic potential for African American students.
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There is also reason to think that a strict disciplinary climate has a

larger negative effect on the realization of academic potential for African
American students in integrated schools than segregated schools. The
frog pond effect, which occurs when equally capable students rate their
own academic abilities as higher in schools with few high achievers and
lower in schools with many high achievers (Davis 1966), indicates that
students compare themselves with an immediate reference group without accounting for the relative standing of that reference group in the
larger population (Zell & Alicke, 2009). In integrated schools, African
American students will assess their own capabilities relative not only to
same-race peers, but also to White peers. If school administrators and
teachers treat White students as better school citizens than African
American students in integrated schools with strict disciplinary climates,
then African American students may downgrade their subjective assessments of their own academic potential in a way that they would not in
segregated schools. In segregated schools with strict disciplinary climates,
there is less opportunity to make direct racial comparisons between students. Thus, African American students in segregated schools may rate
their own potential as higher than do their peers in integrated schools
with similar disciplinary climates, even when comparing students of
equal academic aptitude.
Hypothesis 4: Strict disciplinary climates will negatively affect the realization of academic potential for African American students to a greater
extent in integrated than segregated schools.
Another purpose of the school-level analysis is to explore the racial gap
in academic achievement in integrated high schools, in particular. As
Muller, Riegle-Crumb, Schiller, Wilkinson, and Frank (2010) argued,
school integration is not a panacea for racial inequality in academic outcomes. Academic opportunity structures that resegregate students within
integrated schools pose a direct threat to African American students academic progress. For instance, Kelly (2009) found that African American
students are less likely to take advanced math courses in integrated and
majority-White schools. Analyzing a sample of integrated high schools,
Muller and her colleagues (2010) found that in schools with an unequal
academic opportunity structure (as measured by the overrepresentation
of White students in advanced math courses), African American students
earn lower grade point averages (GPAs) on average, net of students
prior achievement and course placement. This analysis tests for a similar
effect of an unequal opportunity structure on the racial gap in the realization of academic potential. The analysis will hold constant each
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students own course-taking to try to isolate the effect of a school-level

racialized academic opportunity structure from potential effects of students own course-taking patterns.
Once an array of individual characteristics is held constant, why would
African American students academic development be stymied in schools
with large racial AP course gaps? Large racial AP course gaps may serve
as a contextual trigger of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat occurs
when a person feels at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about
ones social group. Once threatened by the stereotype, the persons performance in the relevant domain suffers (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson,
1995). As Steele wrote, it is important to keep in mind that students susceptibility to [stereotype] threat derives not from internal doubts about
their ability (e.g., their internalization of the stereotype) but from their
identification with the domain and the resulting concern they have about
being stereotyped in it (p. 614). We can begin to see why, regardless of
students own course-taking patterns, an overall racialized AP course-taking regime within the school could lead African American students to fall
short of realizing their academic potential.
Hypothesis 5: Racial inequality in access to AP courses negatively
affects the realization of academic potential for African American
students.
DATA AND SAMPLE
The analyses used data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002,
conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). ELS
is a nationally representative sample of high school students, who were
first surveyed in 2002, when all the students were sophomores. The first
follow-up wave of data collection occurred in 2004, when most students
were seniors in high school. ELS used a two-stage sampling process. In
the first stage, public and private high schools were sampled using a stratified probability proportional to size sampling methodology, yielding 752
high schools. In stage 2, approximately 26 tenth-grade students from
each school were sampled, yielding a sample size of 15,362 sophomores.
Students were resurveyed in 2004, yielding a sample size of 12,427 students (Ingels, Pratt, Rogers, Siegel, & Stutts, 2005). The student-level
data consist of student surveys, students transcript records, students
scores on reading and math assessments conducted by ELS, and surveys
of the students teachers and parents. In addition to student-level data,
ELS includes school-level data, consisting of a school administrator survey, a facilities checklist, and a librarian survey.
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The analyses used the 10th- and 12th-grade waves of ELS. I limited the
sample to self-identified African American and White students. The student sample size is 9,680, and the school sample size is 670.2 I used multiple imputation to replace missing data on independent variables
because listwise deletion would have reduced the sample to 5,380.3 All
parameter estimates are averages of each of the parameters from the five
multiply imputed data sets. Standard errors were computed by using the
average of the squared standard errors over the set of analyses and the
between-analysis parameter estimate variation, which accounts for the
uncertainty introduced by missing data (Allison, 2002; Rubin, 1987).
MEASURES
DEPENDENT VARIABLE: UNREALIZED ACADEMIC POTENTIAL
The dependent variableunrealized academic potentialmeasures the
extent to which students senior-year grades were consistent with the
grades predicted by their academic skills, as measured in 10th grade. The
measure was constructed in two steps, as presented in Table 1. First, an
ordinary least squares (OLS) equation was used to predict students 12thgrade GPAs across academic courses (taken from students official transcripts). Composite item response theory (IRT) scores on the math and
reading tests administered by ELS in 10th grade were used to predict
GPA. IRT scores are a particularly good measure for investigating unrealized academic potential because the score represents the students mastery of the material rather than how well the student performed relative
to other students, as with norm-referenced scores (Ingels et al., 2005).
The tests conducted for ELS were designed to test curriculum-related
math and reading skills rather than general aptitude (Ingels, Pratt,
Rogers, Siegel, & Stutts, 2004). The reliabilities were .92 for the math IRT
and .86 for the reading IRT (Ingels et al., 2005). The test score coefficient from the regression equation was used to predict the 12th-grade
GPA for each student in the sample.
In the second step, I subtracted each students predicted GPA from his
or her actual GPA, as reported on the students high school transcript.
This difference yielded the residual GPA. Negative values indicate that a
student earned a GPA that was lower than his or her composite test score
predicted, positive values indicate that a student earned a higher GPA
than predicted, and a value of 0 indicates that a student earned the exact
GPA predicted by his or her test score.
Some have argued that as measures of academic ability, test scores and
grades are riddled with error, which can distort regression results in a
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way that produces overprediction [lower actual than predicted grades]

among lower-scoring groups and underprediction [higher actual than
predicted grades] among higher-scoring groups (Zwick & Sklar, 2005,
pp. 442443). However, as Zwick and Sklar (2005) noted, women tend to
earn higher grades in college than predicted by their SAT scores even
though as a group, they score lower on the SAT than do men. In addition, as mentioned, the ELS IRT scores are highly reliable (.92 for math;
.86 for reading).4 Thus, the overprediction and underprediction of
African American students and White students grades, respectively,
found here are likely not the result of the mean differences in IRT scores
across the two groups.
Table 1. Construction of the Dependent Variable: Realization of Academic Potential

Note: African American residual GPA is not exactly equal to actual GPA predicted GPA because of rounding.

STUDENT-LEVEL VARIABLES
Table 2 presents detailed descriptions and descriptive statistics for all student-level independent variables used in the analyses. Student-level variables include measures of family background, school attitudes, school
behaviors, and teachers perceptions of the students effort. Several control variables are also measured.
SCHOOL-LEVEL VARIABLES
The focal variables in the school-level analyses are disciplinary climate
and the racial AP course gap. All school-level analyses controlled for
school sector, urbanicity, average studentteacher ratio, and the racial
and social class composition of the student body. Table 3 describes the
school-level variables used in the analyses.

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Table 2. Means, Standard Deviations, and Descriptions for Student-Level Independent Variables Used in
Analyses
Variable name

Description

Metric

Mean SD

Dependent Variable: Actual GPA minus predicted GPA (See text -3.054 = highest degree 0
Realization of
and Table 1 for detailed description of
of unrealized potential;
Academic Potential construction of this variable.)
2.313 = highest degree
of exceeded potential

.700

Alpha

School Attitudes
Importance of
school

Standardized mean of students evaluation

of importance of education for getting a job
later on (14), a good education (13), and
good grades (14) (10th-grade survey)

-5.013 = lowest
standardized score;
1.843 = highest
standardized score

1.000 .725

Educational
expectations

Number of years of education student

expects to complete (10th-grade survey)

11 = not finish
high school;
20 = PhD or MD

16.623 2.190

Hours
homework

Number of hours spent on homework

outside of school per week (10th-grade
survey)

026

5.579

5.870

Disciplinary
actions

Standardized mean of students report of

how many times student got in trouble for
not following school rules, was suspended
or put on probation, and put on in-school
suspension (10th-grade survey)

-2.944 = lowest
standardized score;
10.271 = highest
standardized score

1.000 .585

Teachers
evaluations
of classroom
effort

Standardized mean of teachers responses

to how often the student works hard in class
(15), how often the student completes
homework (15), and whether the student
works hard for good grades (0, 1) (Each
item is the average response for the 10thgrade English and math teachers.)

-3.783 = lowest
standardized score;
3.076 = highest
standardized score

1.000 .874

Student-Reported
Behaviors

Family Background
Parent education Highest number of years of education
11 = did not graduate
completed by either of the students parents high school;
(10th-grade survey)
20 = PhD or MD

15.035 2.370

nl family
income

Students total family income (10th-grade

parent survey)

012.206

10.759 1.020

Two-parent
family

Student resides with two parents (10thgrade survey)

0 = no; 1 = yes

.760

030.973

17.929 4.520

0 = no; 1 = yes

.495

.500

0 = no; 1 = yes

.181

.380

Additional Variables
Academic courses Number of Carnegie units in academic
subjects (.5 is equivalent to a course
meeting one class period per day week for
one semester.) (transcript)
Female

Student is female (10th-grade survey)

African American Student identifies as African American

(10th-grade survey)

11

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Table 3. Means and Descriptions for School-Level Variables Used in Analyses, Standard Deviations in
Parentheses
Description

Metric

Mean

Urban

School in urban area

0 = no; 1 = yes

.310
(.460)

Private religious

Private religious school

0 = no; 1 = yes

.190
(.390)

Private secular

Private secular school

0 = no; 1 = yes

.040
(.190)

% free lunch

Percent of students eligible for free

lunch

0%100%

Studentteacher ratio

Ratio of number of students to

full-time teachers

6.50078.800

18.030
(4.970)

0%24% minority

Student body is 0%24% minority

0 = no; 1 = yes

.550
(.500)

25%49% minority

Student body is 25%49% minority

0 = no; 1 = yes

.210
(.410)

75%100% minority

Student body is 75%100% percent

minority

0 = no; 1 = yes

.140
(.340)

Disciplinary climate

School mean of students reports of

frequency of disciplinary actions
(Disciplinary actions measure is
described in Table 2.)

-.933 = lowest
standardized score;
3.167 = highest
standardized score

-.170
(.390)

Racial AP course gap

Proportion of White students enrolled

in AP courses minus proportion of
Black students enrolled in AP courses

-1.0001.000

26.840
(20.980)

.493
(1.133)

ANALYTIC METHOD
To properly model potential effects of school-level characteristics on
racial mean differences in unrealized academic potential, I used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). All analyses used HLM6 software. HLM
allowed me to examine, first, whether racial differences in unrealized
academic potential vary significantly across high schools, and second,
whether the school characteristics discussed earlier contribute to these
mean differences. Each analysis was performed on each of five multiplyimputed data sets, and parameters were averaged across the five data sets.
The standard errors of fixed effects were not averaged, but estimated
with regard to both sampling and measurement error (Raudenbush,
Bryk, Cheong, & Congdon, 2004), which takes into account the uncertainty introduced by imputing missing data (Allison, 2002; Rubin, 1987).
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There were two sets of analyses. The first set of analyses used the entire
sample and proceeded in a series of models, in which sets of predictor
variables were progressively entered to isolate the contribution of each
set of variables to racial differences in unrealized academic potential. If
any mean differences between African American and White students in
unrealized academic potential (as indicated by the African American
coefficient) diminished once sets of predictors were added to the equation, this suggests that racial differences in these variables contributed to
racial differences in unrealized academic potential. I examined changes
in the African American coefficient to decide whether particular sets of
variables helped explain racial differences in the predictive validity of
earlier high school test scores on later high school GPAs.5 The final level
1 model (Model 6 in Table 4) estimated the coefficients for the studentlevel variables for each school j (Equation 1). The literature suggests centering variables around the group mean when cross-level interactions are
of interest (Bryk & Raudenbush, 2002; Enders & Tofighi, 2007). Thus,
the African American coefficient was centered around its group mean in
models testing cross-level interactions, which means that African
American and White students were compared within the same schools.
All other variables are centered around their grand means.
Yij = 0j1j (African American) + 2j (Female) + 3j (Academic Courses)
(1)
+ 4j (Parent Education) + 5j (Natural Log of Family Income) + 6j (Two Parents)
+ 7j (Importance of Education) + 8j (Educational Expectations)
+ 9j (Time Spent on Homework) + 10j (Disciplinary Actions)
+ 11j (Teacher-Reported Effort) + r1j

The level 2 model in the first set of analyses predicted the relationships
between school characteristics and the level of unrealized academic
potential for all students who had the school-level average for each of the
level 1 variables (the intercept, 0j) and the level of unrealized academic
potential for African Americans relative to Whites (the African American
coefficient, 1j). The measurement strategy for school racial composition
allowed for the possibility of nonlinear effects. Whereas a continuous percent minority variable would indicate whether increases in the percentage of minority students in a school were associated with increases or
decreases in the realization of academic potential, the dummy variable
approach employed here allowed for the detection of negative effects at
either very high or low levels of minority student representation.6 All
school-level variables were centered around their grand means.

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0j = 00 + 01(Urban) + 02(Private) + 03(Percent Free Lunch)

+ 04(Student-Teacher Ratio) + 05(0-24% Minority) + 06(25-49% Minority)
+ 07(75-100% Minority) + 07(Disciplinary Climate) + u0j

(2)

1j = 10 + 11(Urban) + 12(Private) + 13(Percent Free Lunch)

+ 14(Student-Teacher Ratio) + 15(0-24% Minority) + 16(25-49% Minority)
+ 17(75-100% Minority) + 18(Disciplinary Climate) + u1j

(3)

The second set of analyses splits the sample into integrated and segregated schools. The subsample analyses focus on potential variations in
school-level effects across segregated and integrated schools. The level 1
model in these analyses is the same as Equation 1, except that the number of AP courses that students have taken was controlled in the integrated subsample analysis. The level 2 models are essentially the same as
Equations 2 and 3. The racial AP course gap variable is included only in
the integrated schools analysis because inclusion of this variable would
have resulted in the loss of 276 schools from the full sample or segregated
schools sample.
RESULTS
Studies measuring unrealized potential as lowered educational expectations or unrealized plans for educational attainment have found that
unrealized potential is more likely to exist among White students than
students of color (Hanson, 1994; Trusty, 2000; Trusty & Harris, 1999).
Here, however, the mean residual GPA is -.163 for African American students and .076 for White students. Thus, African American students fall
short of their academic potential by .163 grade points, whereas Whites
exceed their potential by .076 grade points. Although .163 grade points
may seem inconsequential in absolute terms, in the world of selective college admissions, admissions officers are charged with using very small differences between students to make decisions about who will be admitted.
Thus, small quantitative differences can have important consequences
for students.
EXPLANATORY ANALYSES
The analyses for the full sample focus on two questions: (1) Which studentlevel characteristics help explain racial differences in the fulfillment of
academic potential? (2) Which school-level characteristics help explain
variation across high schools in this racial difference? Table 4 presents the
results of the HLM models for the full sample. Models 2 through 5 add one
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or more student-level variables. The intercept and the African American

coefficient are allowed to vary across schools. Model 6 adds school-level
variables to the equations for the intercept (level of realized academic
potential for all students who have the school-level mean for each level 1
variable) and African American coefficient (level of realized academic
potential for African American students relative to White students).
Table 4. HLMs Predicting Realization of Academic Potential, Standard Errors in Parentheses
Model 1
Intercept
.035* (.014)
Variance
.046***
Urban
Private religious
Private secular
% receiving free lunch
Studentteacher ratio
0%24 % minority
25%49 % minority
75%100 % minority
Disciplinary climate
African American x _____
Intercept
-.225*** (.031)
Variance
.101***
Urban
Private religious
Private secular
% receiving free lunch
Studentteacher ratio
0%24 % minority
25%49 % minority
75%100 % minority
Disciplinary climate
Female
Academic courses
Family background
Parent education
nl family income
Two parents
Student-reported behaviors and attitudes
Importance of education
Educational expectations
Time spent on homework
Disciplinary actions
Teacher-reported effort
BIC
20559.951

Model 2
Model 3
Model 4
Model 5
Model 6
-.075*** (.017) -.137*** (.026)-.118*** (.025) -.097*** (.025) .017 (.012)
.057***
.056***
.054***
.047***
.044***
-.092** (.028)
-.202** (.048)
.032 (.070)
.005*** (.001)
.007* (.003)
.110** (.040)
.046 (.044)
-.186** (.058)
-.035 (.047)
-.134*** (.031) -.112*** (.032)-.123*** (.032) -.071* (.031)
.097***
.096***
.086***
.082***

-.053 (.035)
.074***
.009 (.076)
.234* (.115)
-.005 (.119)
-.004 (.002)
-.009 (.009)
-.235* (.098)
-.102 (.092)
-.402** (.141)
-.324*** (.082)
.232*** (.016) .234*** (.016) .206*** (.016) .169*** (.016) .166*** (.016)
.048*** (.002) .047*** (.002) .038*** (.002) .027*** (.003) .027*** (.002)
.000 (.004) .002 (.004)
.006 (.010) .007 (.010)
.075** (.024) .067** (.025)
.066*** (.010)
-.020*** (.005)
-.001 (.001)
-.090*** (.013)

19146.472

19147.178

18902.616

-.001 (.004)
.004 (.010)
.058* (.023)

.001 (.004)
.006 (.010)
.052* (.023)

.032*** (.010)
-.024*** (.004)
-.002 (.001)
-.038* (.013)
.196*** (.011)
18301.956

.031** (.009)
-.023*** (.004)
-.001 (.001)
-.038** (.013)
.195*** (.011)
18173.242

Note: For Models 1 through 5, all level 1 predictors are centered around their grand means, except for the
African American variable. For Model 6, the African American variable is centered around its group mean
to properly model the cross-level interaction; all other variables are centered around their grand means.
ICC for the dependent variable = .1077. nl = natural log.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
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Teachers College Record, 114, 070303 (2012)

Model 1 serves as a baseline for comparing the size of the racial difference in realization of academic potential with successive models. On average, African American students GPAs are .225 points lower than predicted
relative to Whites. This racial difference varies significantly across high
schools, as indicated by the significant variance of the African American
coefficient. Within one standard deviation (.317) the African American
coefficient ranges from -.542 to .092. Once gender and the number of academic courses completed by students are held constant in Model 2, the
African American coefficient falls to -.134. Socioeconomic and family
structure differences between White and African American students
explain about 16% of the racial difference in fulfillment of academic
potential, as the African American coefficient falls to -.112 in Model 3.
Model 4 tests Hypothesis 1that, taken together, students selfreported school behaviors and attitudes account for none of the racial
difference in the realization of academic potential. However, the addition of these variables leads to a reduction of the African American coefficient by about 14%. Thus, mean differences between White and African
American students on school attitudes and behaviors do account for a
modest portion of the racial difference in the realization of academic
potential. Interestingly, the coefficient for educational expectations is
negative, indicating that as educational expectations increase, students
are less likely to reach their academic potential.
Model 5 introduces teachers perceptions of students effort in class.
The addition of this variable accounts for the largest drop (42%) in racial
disparity in realizing academic potential. This result is striking because
differences in students own reports of their conduct, time spent on
homework, and school attitudes are held constant. Hypothesis 2, that
teachers perceptions of students matter independent of students selfreported behaviors, thus receives support.
Model 6 introduces school-level variables. The coefficients for the
intercept equation indicate how these school characteristics are related
to the realization of academic potential for students who have the schoollevel average for each of the level 1 variables. On average, students in
75%100% minority schools fall short of their predicted GPAs by .186
grade points. However, in schools that are 76%100% White, students
with the school-level average for all level 1 variables are predicted to
exceed their academic potential by .11 grade points. Thus, predominantly minority schools appear to dampen the extent to which both
White and African American students reach their academic potential,
whereas at predominantly White schools, both groups of students are
predicted to exceed their potential. The coefficient for disciplinary
climate is close to zero and not significant, suggesting that it is unrelated,
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TCR, 114, 070303 Racial Differences

on average, to the realization of academic potential.

Although the African American coefficient (-.05) is not statistically significant, indicating that, on average, there is not a significant racial difference in realization of academic potential across these schools, there
are several significant cross-level interactions. The cross-level interactions
for the African American coefficient show how school-level characteristics affect the racial gap in the realization of academic potential. Negative
values indicate that the school-level variable is associated with larger
racial differences in the realization of academic potential, with African
American students being less likely to fulfill their academic potential relative to White students. Although disciplinary climate was unrelated to
the realization of academic potential for students with school-level averages for the level 1 variables, the negative cross-level interaction (-.324)
indicates that the racial disparity in the realization of academic potential
increases as the school disciplinary climate becomes increasingly punitive. In other words, African American students are less likely to realize
their academic potential relative to White students in schools with strict
disciplinary climates. Converting the coefficient into an effect size gives
an idea of the substantive contribution of strict disciplinary climates to
the racial gap in the realization of academic potential. The effect size is
.7, meaning that the racial gap in the realization of academic potential is
.7 standard deviation units higher in schools that are one standard deviation above the sample mean for the disciplinary climate variable as compared with high schools that are at the sample mean. Thus, the data
strongly support Hypothesis 3.
Figure 1 shows predicted values for the realization of academic potenFigure 1. Predicted fulfillment of academic potential for African American Students, by school disciplinary
climate

Note: All predictors are held at their sample grand means. Negative values for the fulfillment of academic
potential indicate lost potential; positive values indicate exceeded potential.

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Teachers College Record, 114, 070303 (2012)

tial for African American students as the disciplinary climate becomes

increasingly punitive. All else equal, African American students are
expected to fulfill their academic potential at schools that hover around
the average school disciplinary climate, but at schools that are more
punitive than the average school, African American students are predicted to fall short of their academic potential.
The cross-level interactions for the racial composition dummy variables
show that the advantages of attending predominantly White schools
accrue to White students to a greater extent than to their African
American peers, and the disadvantages of attending predominantly
minority schools accrue to a greater extent to African Americans than
Whites.7 The racial gap in the realization of academic potential at predominantly minority schools is .402 grade points (.650 standard deviation
units), and at predominantly White schools, .235 grade points (.411 standard deviation units). These results could stem from two phenomena:
(1) internal stratification processes that privilege Whites relative to
African Americans in mostly White schools or (2) the burden of being
one of the few African American students in a predominantly White
school, which could stymie African American students ability to achieve
to their fullest potential.
SPLIT SAMPLE ANALYSES: SEGREGATED AND INTEGRATED HIGH
SCHOOLS
The second set of analyses takes Muller and colleagues (2010) point that
it is crucial that we examine variations among racially diverse schools
(p. 1058) by splitting the sample by the level of school segregation. The
integrated subsample includes schools that are 25%74% minority,
because the full sample analysis revealed no significant differences
between 25%50% minority schools and 51%74% minority schools in
the realization of academic potential for African Americans or Whites.
The results of the full sample analysis also showed that African
Americans realization of academic potential was harmed relative to
Whites in schools that were mostly White or mostly non-White. Thus, the
segregated school sample includes schools that are either 0%24% or
75%100% minority. The focus in these analyses is, first, to test whether
disciplinary climate affects the racial gap in the realization of academic
potential to a greater extent in integrated schools than segregated
schools (Hypothesis 4), and second, to test whether racialized opportunity structures within integrated schools affect the racial gap in the realization of academic potential (Hypothesis 5). Results are presented in
Table 5.
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TCR, 114, 070303 Racial Differences

Table 5. HLM Predicting Realization of Academic Potential by Percent of Minority Students in School,
Standard Errors in Parentheses

Note: The same level 1 coefficients were estimated as those shown in Equation 1. The number of AP courses
taken by students was added as a level 1 variable in the integrated sample analysis to control for students
own AP course-taking once the school-level racial AP course gap variable was added. All variables are centered around their grand means, except for the African American variable, which is centered around its
group mean. For the segregated sample, Nstudents =7370; Nschools = 500. For the integrated sample,
Nstudents =2310; Nschools =170.
a Racial AP course gap was excluded from the segregated sample analysis because it would have resulted in
the loss of 276 schools from the subsample.
b The African American coefficient is constrained to be equal across schools in the segregated sample
because the variance was not significant. The BIC for the model with the fixed African American coefficients was significantly lower than the BIC for the model in which the coefficient was allowed to vary, indicating that the fixed-coefficient model was a better fit.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

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Teachers College Record, 114, 070303 (2012)

The results are consistent with Hypothesis 4. Disciplinary climate has a

negative effect on the realization of academic potential for African
American students only in integrated schools.8 These results imply that a
strict disciplinary climate takes on a racialized symbolic meaning particularly when there enough African American and White students present
to make racial comparisons. In such contexts, students, school officials,
or both may come to understand the disciplinary climate in racialized
terms.
The cross-level interaction between the African American coefficient
and the measure of inequality in opportunities for AP coursework is not
significant. The racial AP course gap thus does not negatively affect the
realization of academic potential for African American students, as
Hypothesis 5 predicted. The absence of this predicted relationship could
reflect that AP racial enrollment gaps align closely with racial differences
in mean test scores. Prior research suggests that African American students are more likely to take advanced courses once prior achievement is
controlled (Attewell, 2001; Gamoran & Mare, 1989). If African
Americans with high test scores are just as likely (or more likely) to take
AP courses as high-scoring Whites, all else equal, then we might not
expect large WhiteBlack gaps in AP enrollment to affect the realization
of academic potential. They may instead reflect large racial differences in
mean test scores prior to 11th grade, when most students first have the
chance to enroll in AP courses.
DISCUSSION
Researchers should make no mistake about the importance of examining
racial differences in high school grades alongside racial differences in
test scores. As an illustration, I divided the full sample analyzed here
according to whether students had enrolled in a four-year college or university by 2006, two years after high school. For African American students who had enrolled in a four-year college, there is virtually no
difference in predicted and actual 12th-grade GPAs, but African
American students who had not enrolled in college fell short of their predicted GPAs by .34 grade points on average. White students who had not
enrolled in college had earned grades that were just .08 points lower than
expected. This underscores the role that supporting African American
students in reaching their GPA potential could play in clearing the pathway from high school to college.
The results have yielded several notable findings regarding the extent
of and explanations for African American students unrealized academic
potential. First, African American 12th graders are more likely than
20

TCR, 114, 070303 Racial Differences

White 12th graders to earn grades that are lower than their 10th-grade
scores on math and reading tests predicted. The high reliabilities of the
tests bolster the conclusion that many African American students are
earning grades, an increasingly important criterion for college admissions, that are not commensurate with their actual academic abilities.
The biggest reason for this unrealized stock of academic potential at
the student level is that, on average, teachers perceive White students as
exerting more effort and conforming more to classroom expectations as
compared with African American students. The analyses controlled for
several student-reported school behaviors and attitudes, which suggests
some level of disconnect between teachers perceptions of students and
students reports of what they actually do and believe.
These data do not allow for an empirical exploration of why teachers
would rate African American students classroom effort as lower than
that of White students who reported the same amount of time spent on
homework, frequency of disciplinary actions, and attitudes about school.
Given that the number of times that students were formally disciplined
by the school was held constant, it is unlikely that the teachers perceptions effect reflects large differences in students actual classroom behaviors. However, smaller, nuanced differences in the ways that students
positively engage with school could have amplified ramifications. In
other words, even when comparing African American and White students
who spend the same amount of time on homework, behave equally well
at school, and value education equally, it could be that White students
still are better able to play the game of school. White students, for
instance, may be more comfortable interacting with their teachers, which
teachers may perceive as stronger engagement. In addition, as discussed
earlier in the article, teachers may interpret classroom behaviors that do
not comply with White cultural norms as misbehavior.
Downey and Pribesh (2004) found that African American students
received more favorable evaluations of classroom effort from African
American teachers than from White teachers. Although the measure of
teachers perceptions of student effort used in this study is an average of
two teachers evaluations, I conducted an auxiliary analysis focusing on
whether students were paired with at least one same-race teacher. If the
teacher perceptions effect found in this study were due to a cultural mismatch between White teachers and African American students, then controlling for student-teacher racial congruence should have decreased the
extent to which teachers perceptions accounted for the racial gap in the
realization of academic potential. However, the results showed that
accounting for studentteacher racial congruence did not affect the role
that teachers perceptions played in the racial gap in the realization of
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Teachers College Record, 114, 070303 (2012)

academic potential. Although Downey and Pribesh found potentially

negative effects of studentteacher racial incongruity for African
American kindergarteners and eighth graders, these results suggest that
African American high school students are not as positively perceived as
their White peers, regardless of racial congruity with teachers. It could be
that social class mismatches between students and teachers, rather than
racial incongruity alone, would help explain why teachers perceptions of
students contribute such a great deal to the racial gap in the realization
of academic potential.
The second set of findings center on the role of school characteristics
in African American students unrealized academic potential. The results
show that attending segregated high schools that are 75%100% minority is particularly detrimental to the realization of full academic potential
for African American students. These results are consistent with past
studies that have found negative effects of attending predominantly
minority schools on African American students academic achievement
(e.g., Bankston & Caldas, 1996; Mickelson & Heath, 1999). This study
also indicates, however, that although African American students are
more likely to reach their academic potential in predominantly White
schools than predominantly minority schools, there still exists a
WhiteBlack racial gap in the realization of academic potential in majority-White schools. This finding is consistent with Goldsmith (2004),
whose study found that African American students in predominantly
White schools are less optimistic and hold less positive attitudes toward
education than their same-race peers in predominantly minority schools.
Simply sending African American students to predominantly Whites
schools, then, does not guarantee that they will see themselves as fully
enfranchised students or benefit from the environment to the same
extent as their White peers.
Integrated high schools with strict disciplinary climates have wider
racial gaps in the realization of academic potential. One interpretation of
this result is that African American students feel more alienated by strict
disciplinary climates than do Whites because racial meanings are
ascribed to the disciplinary climate. Even when African American students are not themselves the targets of disciplinary actions, attending a
school like this could affect African American students concentration
and effort, thus making it more difficult to fulfill academic potential. It
is important to note that African American students in schools with harsh
disciplinary climates are not likely developing resistance stances toward
education, because this effect of strict disciplinary climates exists controlling for students own behaviors and attitudes. A second interpretation
of the negative effect of strict disciplinary climates on the racial gap in
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TCR, 114, 070303 Racial Differences

fulfilling academic potential is that school administrators and teachers

perceptions of African American students are negatively affected by the
disciplinary climate, regardless of African American students actual
behaviors and attitudes.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
Programs that focus on relationships between teachers and African
American students seem a promising avenue for increasing the fulfillment of African American students potential, given that once teachers
perceptions of student effort were held constant, African American
underfulfillment of potential relative to Whites narrowed by 42%. This is
especially important considering the evidence that African American students are more strongly affected by their relationships with teachers than
are White students (Jussim, Eccles, & Madon, 1996). Although teachers
perceptions are not totally inaccurate, neither are they perfect reflections
of students actual effort (Jussim et al., 1996). Some of the noise in
measures of teachers perceptions of African American students effort
may stem from the use of a seemingly neutral lens that is actually calibrated by the expectations of White middle-class culture.
At the school level, redoubling our efforts to fight the resegregation of
Americas schools is an important piece of making sure that African
American students realize their academic potential. Desegregating predominantly minority schools, in particular, is an important goal. The
results showed that both African American and White students fall short
of their academic potential, on average, at schools that are 75%100%
minority. However, African American students fall short of their academic potential to a greater extent than Whites in these schools. In fact, the
racial disparity in realization of academic potential is quite large at these
schools, at .65 standard deviation units. But the results suggest that integration efforts should target predominantly White schools as well.
Although on average, students at predominantly White schools are
expected to exceed their academic potential by a small amount (.11
grade points), there is still a sizeable racial gap in the extent to which students exceed their academic potential (.411 standard deviation units).
High schools that are racially integrated must actively work to ensure
that African American students are not disadvantaged within integrated
schools, either through the internal resegregation of students or by fostering school climates that are particularly nonconducive to African
American students reaching their full academic potential. Several recent
studies have drawn attention to the pernicious effects of segregated
course-taking regimes within integrated schools (Mickelson & Velasco,
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Teachers College Record, 114, 070303 (2012)

2006; Muller et al., 2010; Tyson, 2006; Tyson, Darity, & Castellino, 2005).
This study reveals that characteristics of schools that lack immediately
obvious racial implications, such as a schools approach to student discipline, may be just as harmful as overtly racialized inequality within
schools. Administrators in integrated schools need to recognize that strict
disciplinary climates can be detrimental to the fulfillment of academic
potential for African American students, regardless of students individual experiences of disciplinary actions. The results showed that for
schools that are one standard deviation above the sample mean for
school disciplinary practices, the WhiteBlack gap in the realization of
academic potential is .7 standard deviations, a large effect size by any
standard. Thus, the perceived benefits of strict disciplinary policies need
to be weighed very carefully against the drawbacks of such policies for
African American students. A promising line for future research would
be to identify the specific aspects of punitive disciplinary approaches that
disadvantage African American students.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Jennifer Glanville, Mary Campbell, Mary Noonan, Kevin Leicht, and
David Bills for their feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Notes
1. In this study, I operationalized school disciplinary climate as the average number of
disciplinary actions administered by the school. See Table 3 for a more detailed description.
2. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) requires all sample sizes to be
rounded to the nearest ten to protect anonymity.
3. I used NORM (Schafer, 2000) to create five data sets with randomly drawn imputed
values for the missing cases.
4. Unfortunately, ELS does not report test reliabilities by racial groups.
5. The psychometric literature has a long tradition of predictive validity analyses.
Although most of these studies focus on describing predictive validity rather than explaining it, a few studies do investigate explanations for group differences in predictive validity.
For example, Stricker, Rock, and Burton (1993) investigated explanations for the differential prediction of college grades for men and women. To determine what accounted for this
underprediction, they checked whether the squared semipartial correlation (sr2) of gender
with residual college GPA decreased significantly as other independent variables are added
to the equation. This method of comparing correlations, however, is limited when attempting to detect mediations. As Kenny (2009) has noted, there are situations in which examining changes in correlations may suggest that mediation has occurred, when in fact there is
no mediation. For example, even if the proposed mediator has no effect on the outcome,
the partial correlation will still decline, leading to the erroneous conclusion of mediation.
Kenny therefore recommended checking for mediation not by examining changes in correlations, but by examining changes in coefficients.
6. Although the percent of African American students would have been preferable to

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TCR, 114, 070303 Racial Differences

the percent of minority students, ELS does not include school-level data on the percentage
of specific minority groups by school. Aggregated student data would not have been a reliable measure of the true representation of African American students in a given school
given the within-school sample sizes. Alternative versions of all models were estimated using
the continuous percent minority measure. Use of this alternative measure did not substantively affect other model parameters.
7. Modeling percent minority as a continuous variable would have masked this relationship between school racial composition and realization of academic potential for
African American students. In an auxiliary analysis, a cross-level interaction between
African American and a continuous percent minority variable did not reach statistical significance (b = .002; SE = .001), though it was very close. Additionally, Schwarzs Bayesian
information criterion (BIC) for this auxiliary model was more than 10 points higher than
the BIC for Model 6, indicating a better model fit when measuring racial composition as
dummy variables.
8. To check the sensitivity of these results, I ran an auxiliary subsample analysis with
four subsamples: 0%24% minority, 25%49% minority, 50%74% minority, and
75%100% minority. The pattern of results was consistent with the split sample analyses
shown in Table 5. School disciplinary climate had a significant negative effect on the
African American coefficient only in the 25%49% and 50%74% minority subsamples.

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TINA WILDHAGEN is assistant professor of sociology at Smith College.

She conducts research on racial, ethnic, and social class inequality in the
American education system. Wildhagens recent articles on racial and
class inequality in the education system can be found in recent or forthcoming volumes of Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Perspectives, and the
Journal of Negro Education.

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