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Some stuff here; https://cepa.stanford.edu/educational-opportunity-monitoring-project/achievement-gaps/race/
I don't think this can account for the 1970s and 1980s improvement in black performance. By 1980 black inter-racial marriage rates were a whopping 5%, a figure which increased only quite slowly and gradually over the following years, not really compatible with the quickest convergence being during those years. There is the question you raise about changes in identification, but again I don't think that was occurring - not in most of the country anyway - to any significant extent during the fastest years of decline (during the years to which that data goes back).
That doesn't seem too likely given the nature of the data. It's from the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, who administer their own nationwide tests to students, which are (obviously) the same for every race. Could there be some increased level of teaching to the tests etc. from teachers/schools in order to boost their numbers. Maybe? But again if this were so you'd surely expect the strongest effect of that to be now, when the schools are under pressure to improve equitable outcomes etc., not in the 1970s. And wouldn't we see that reflected across the board, not just in black students? If this was a case of schools/districts marking their own homework, no pun intended, then one might be more suspicious but I don't think it is.
Well to be clear, if it were either of these that would validate the Brown decision, because it would prove that segregation was lowering the relative quality of the education received by black students.
What forces do you suppose these to have been? I would put the Cold War and WW2 pretty high on the list of things that ended segregation, not sure they brought about the ruin of society though.
Thank you for the source, unfortunately I didn't see an explanation for what is causing these gaps to shrink slightly.
So should the Department of Education start subsidizing 'white' birthrates to ensure an adequate supply of 'white' students to improve education for everybody or?
Modernity, hubris, the Evil One... it's hard to say. Whatever reason there was to blow up a somewhat functional society at the time, even for a lack of foresight, blind optimism, carelessness... Hard lessons the future will have to learn. One should not concern themselves with slippery slopes but with slippery slopes leading to slipperier slopes. Each of our stumbles makes the next more acceptable and the very idea of a stumble confused.
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