Rethinking “(Under) Performance” for Black English Speakers: Beyond Achievement to Opportunity

Abstract

We draw on the concept of the opportunity gap explanatory framework in this study to problematize the notion of “(under)performance” of Black American (i.e., African American) and Black immigrant youth. Examining reading literacy achievement results of Black American and Black immigrant youth using a corpus of data from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), we demonstrate the ways in which these youth self-identified as language speakers on the PISA reading literacy assessment measure, the influence of this self-identification on interpretations of their reading literacy, and the influence of other demographic factors on this achievement across subgroups. We suggest that the disaggregation of data for Black subpopulations can allow for a better understanding of the ways in which demographic, social, and cultural factors impact achievement within specific Black subgroups. We also highlight the need for reframing examinations of Black students’ literacies in ways that are humanizing. Implications for research, practice, and policy are provided.

Keywords

Black immigrant assessment achievement literacy race

The “underperformance” of Black “English-speaking” American (i.e., African American) students in the United States is often attributed to a myriad of factors, among which are linguistic, cultural, socioeconomic, gender, and racial differences (see Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017 for a review). Despite the clear indication that Black “English-speaking” American and immigrant students differ significantly in the cultural backgrounds they bring to learning, much of what we know about Black students has been based primarily on national large-scale assessments that do not distinguish performance based on Black student subpopulations. Instead, these findings consistently compare Black students with their White peers based on aggregated data across Black subgroups (Mwangi & English, 2017; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017).

This method of comparison, though useful to some degree for explaining the “achievement gap” between Black and White children (Reardon, 2011), tends not to reflect the influence of language, culture, socioeconomic status (SES), and gender within the racially similar subpopulations of Black students, whose varied backgrounds have differing impacts on achievement (Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017). As such, measures of Black student performance that focus largely on their comparisons with Whites may mask high-performing Black student outcomes from one subculture (e.g., Black American) in an aggregate score that consists of low-performing Black student outcomes from another subculture (e.g., Black African, Black Caribbean immigrants). In turn, curricular interventions and assessments such as those based on the No Child Left Behind Act and Black-White comparisons of achievement have yet to significantly approach the achievement of Black youth from an asset-based perspective and instead, consistently reflect a deficit mindset mirrored in “damage-centered research” (Tuck, 2009) and “deficit frameworks” (Howard, 2013). Through these deficit mindsets, a persistent attempt is made to curb “failure” for the second largest population of K-12 learners in the United States by inadvertently “(re)documenting” to no avail, the academic “brokenness” (Tuck, 2009) of the Black community (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], 2013; U.S. Census Bureau, 2010; Willis, 2015).

We argue in this study that comparing Black “English-speaking” American student performance with that of racially similar peers (i.e., Black “English-speaking” immigrants) can yield novel ways of thinking beyond the “achievement gap” and help to address “(under)performance” of Black American students in U.S. schools. To do so, we extend the literature by using the “opportunity gap explanatory framework” (Milner, 2012) as a basis for examining the reading literacy performance of Black American and immigrant adolescent youth on the large-scale Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 reading literacy assessment while considering the impact of language self-identification, immigration, gender, SES, and other sociodemographic factors. The following research questions guided the study: (1) How do Black native (African-American) youth and Black immigrant youth in the U.S. self-identify their language (native or non-native speakers of English language) on the PISA 2012 assessment? (2) What is the difference in reading literacy between Black native (American) youth and Black immigrant youth in the U.S., both before and after accounting for their language and socio-demographic characteristics? (3) What is the difference in reading literacy between native English-speaking (‘English as a first language’) Black American youth and native English-speaking Black immigrant youth in the U.S., both before and after accounting for their language and socio-demographic characteristics?

This study concerning Black “English-speaking” youth, many of whom tend to be bidialectal, multidialectal, bilingual, and/or multilingual, is particularly concerned with literacy “(under)performance” given the central role of language and of dialects to literacy assessment and performance (see Abedi, 2017; Bauer, Presiado, & Colomer, 2017; Siegel, 2012). Our focus on literacy is timely given that 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that tasked the Department of Education with examining inequality of educational opportunity across elementary and secondary schools in the United States, the “average black student in grade 12 continues to be . . . placed in the 13th percentile of the score distribution on . . . reading” and “87 percent of White students in grade 12 scored ahead of the average black 12th grader” (NAEP, 2013). We were also cognizant of the call by Ladson-Billings (2016) for centering curriculum (e.g., literacy) as a basis for inquiry given its shrinking role in broader discussions of educational research.

Black adolescents at the high school level who completed the PISA reading literacy assessment were central to this work in keeping with Lee’s (2016) invitation to consider the demonstration of “learning” via tests of cognition as equally as the social and cultural factors that youth must draw upon to complete high school and prepare for college. Using the results of these students’ PISA reading literacy assessments was critical given the increasing role of this internationally based measure in guiding national strategies, agendas, policies, cross-national comparisons, and educational policy beyond U.S. national literacy assessments that consistently portray Black students as underperforming in relation to Whites (e.g., NAEP, 2013; Rutkowski & Rutkowski, 2016; Willis, 2015). Particularly, we were interested in exploring further the ways in which differences in home and test languages for bilingual, multilingual, and bidialectal youth as well as an inability to self-identify as bilingual and or bidialectal on PISA reading literacy have been shown to have a significant impact on the literacy assessment of Black youth in contexts beyond the United States (Smith, Cheema, Kumi-Yeboah, Warrican, & Alleyne, 2018). We were hopeful, too, about exploring the claim by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) about PISA’s focus on application as opposed to subject mastery (OECD, 2006), which we believed could potentially signal an emphasis on the socially and culturally situated (Street, 2000) literacy experiences of (Black) youth.

Background

Traditionally, research focused on the achievement gap between Black and White students has primarily examined causes for Black student underperformance in relation to their White counterparts (e.g., Herron-McCoy, 2009; Mwangi & English, 2017; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017). Findings from this work continue to point to SES, and, increasingly, to wealth, as key variables underlying disparities in achievement between Black (African) American and White students (Herron-McCoy, 2009; Quinn, Cooc, McIntyre, & Gomez, 2016; Valant & Newark, 2016). In contrast, research studies that examine the nuances of culture, race, identity, language, nationality, SES, and generational difference in relation to achievement within the Black student population challenge the notion of Black students as underachievers, asserting instead, that deficit notions and discrimination faced by both Black American and immigrant students often obscure their ability to demonstrate their potential (e.g., Freeman, 2016; Wilson-Akubude, 2016). Counter-narratives illustrate the assets that Black youth bring to learning (e.g., Freeman, 2016), challenge the position that Black American and immigrant youth are failures in subjects such as math (Wilson-Akubude, 2016), indicate the positive role of Black youths’ identities for achievement (Zirkel & Johnson, 2016), and point to the influence of social and parental factors (e.g., Farah, 2015; Kumi-Yeboah, 2018; Mogaka, 2013; Rong & Fitchett, 2008; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001) as well as race (Thomas, Caldwell, Faison, & Jackson, 2009) in the academic success of Black youth.

Similarities across Black subpopulations of youth as described above do not obscure what appears to be the most pervasive perception regarding Black immigrant and American youth in the United States: a marked difference in academic achievement by Black immigrants as compared with their Black American peers (Freeman, 2016; Wilson-Akubude, 2016), which goes against typical indications of lower academic achievement in underrepresented students as compared with their dominant-group peers (Ogbu, 2014). For instance, explanations regarding the achievement of Black immigrant students point to language, parental, nationality, cultural, identity, generational, and racial differences, all of which are said to influence the “overachievement” of Black Caribbean, Ethiopian, Kenyan, Ghanaian, and Somalian immigrant youth in relation to their Black American peers (e.g., Duong, Badaly, Liu, Schwartz, & McCarty, 2016; Farah, 2015; Freeman, 2016; Haynes, 2014; Kumi-Yeboah, 2016, 2018; Mogaka, 2013; Nderu, 2005; Rong & Brown, 2001; Rong & Fitchett, 2008; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001; Thomas et al., 2009; Wilson-Akubude, 2016).

Yet Ogbu (1987, 2014) contends that focusing on cultural factors such as the above as the basis for excellence in certain underrepresented groups is illogical because “minority” groups that do perform better than their dominant-group peers do not often share the same cultural backgrounds or experiences of these peers. He argues, based on global evidence regarding immigrant populations across countries and contexts, that a more reasonable explanation for this phenomenon is that underrepresented individuals (or “immigrant minorities”) who regard themselves as immigrants to a society tend to perform significantly better academically than those who consider themselves as “indigenous minorities” of a former colonial subject. These “immigrant minorities” (many of whom are Black immigrant youth), he claims, are taught to project a cultural frame of reference and an identity that allows them to simultaneously participate in the academic norms of the dominant-group norms when they engage in schooling while also maintaining their own norms and identities that deviate from these practices when they are out of these spaces (Ogbu, 2014). Extending this argument further, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) developed the framework of “Fictive kinship” to explain the “underperformance” of Black students in the United States, suggesting that Black youth feared being accused of “acting White” and, thus, socially and psychologically experienced a diminished effort that led to their underachievement. While it is possible that some Black American as well as immigrant youth do deploy such strategies (we know now, based on the literature discussed earlier, that there is tremendous heterogeneity within and across subpopulations of Black youth), recent evidence challenges the homogeneous notion of “high-achieving” Black African immigrant youth. This evidence suggests that these youth, much like their Black American peers, face significant challenges with overall academic performance and achievement, which can easily go unnoticed and unaddressed, thus, raising questions about the “new model minority” status typically ascribed to Black African immigrant youth (Upkopodu, 2018).

Differences across Black subpopulations as well as identified challenges to the pervasive notion that Black Americant youth perform better than their Black American peers present a useful basis for considering the ways in which language predicts the literacy outcomes of Black subpopulations of youth. This is especially the case given the role of language as a predictor of literacy performance (see Abedi, 2017; Bauer et al., 2017; Siegel, 2012). For instance, growing evidence shows that Black adolescent speakers of the African American Language (AAL) who know how to code-switch and resolve conflicting ideologies about differences across language reflect better reading achievement as measured by standardized tests (e.g., Godley & Escher, 2012). These indications confirm the long-established influence of English dialectal difference on literacy for Black American students (e.g., Baker-Bell, 2013; Goodman, 1972; Isenbarger & Willis, 2006; Labov, 1969; Paris, 2012; Redd & Webb, 2005; Rickford & Rickford, 1995; Sligh & Connor, 2003; Smitherman, 2000; Terry, Connor, Petscher, & Conlin, 2012) but they also raise questions about how these differences are accounted for on standardized literacy assessments for Black youth (Charity, Scarborough, & Griffin, 2004; Connor & Craig, 2006; Craig, Zhang, Hensel, & Quinn, 2009; Johnson & VanBrackle, 2012; Laing & Kamhi, 2003; Patton-Terry & Connor, 2010).

Much like their Black American counterparts, there is a question of how the language differences of Black “English-speaking” immigrant populations, many of whom are bilingual, multilingual, bidialectal, and multidialectal (de Kleine, 2006; Smith, In press a; Ukpokodu & Ojiambo, 2017; Winer, 2006), are accounted for on literacy assessments. Despite observed differences in the dialects used by Black immigrant and Black American youth (Winer, 2006) and despite the tendency of Black immigrant students to come from countries where the official language spoken is English (Zong & Batalova, 2016), much like their Black American counterparts, many dialect-speaking and multilingual students from Africa and the Caribbean have been found to face challenges with overall academic performance and achievement (Upkopodu, 2018). Others lack proficiency in the academic English language of the United States based on differences in language structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary (de Kleine, 2006; Pratt-Johnson, 2006).

Theoretical Framework

The “achievement gap”—the significant difference between White and non-dominant students’ scores—is premised on the notion that performance on achievement measures can supposedly be used to predict student success, which itself is often informed by and potentially biased because of “privileged epistemologies” or “ways of knowing” steeped in Eurocentric paradigms of knowledge (Milner, 2012). These ways of knowing, because they favor Eurocentrism, do not often acknowledge the epistemologies of Black youth, but rather, inappropriately favor individualistic and “present” (i.e., one-time) representations of success as opposed to consolidated representations that honor connections made by students across past, present, and future (Banks, 2016; Shepard, 2016; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017).

Some have argued that the achievement gap, in its connotation of Black-White achievement, is based on a “deficit model” that dehumanizes Black students (Paris & Winn, 2014). Others note that the gap seems inappropriate (Milner, 2012) based on the diverse cultures that go unaccounted for within Black subgroups and the way in which this gap reinforces racial superiority (Willis, 2015). In turn, many such as Ladson-Billings (2006) agree that White students should not be classified as the cultural “norm” by which all others are evaluated and question the idea of an “achievement gap,” asserting instead, that an “education debt” exists in our inequitable, and sometimes racist systems, contexts, policies, and practices that owe students who have not been adequately served.

Milner (2012) responded to this challenge, proposing the notion of an “opportunity gap explanatory framework” to rethink how Black student “(under)performance” is determined. Milner questioned (a) the degree to which achievement is synonymous with learning; (b) “decision-making about what it means to achieve, why, and how do we know about achievement”; and (c) “the kind of learning and knowledge acquisition that never shows up on achievement measures—including high-stakes tests” (p. 695). This framework shows that opportunity gaps in relation to diversity exist at all levels (e.g., teaching, learning, assessing, policy making) in the educational system.

We argue that such opportunity gaps can be identified in literacy instruction, assessment, and learning of Black (and other) youth who tend to engage in socioculturally situated invisible literacy practices which comprise nonnormative practices of literacy that reflect informal and functional knowledge and skills put into practice across home and school contexts (Dyson, 2015; Orellana, 2016; Souto-Manning, 2013; Street, 1993). They can arise in spaces where Black youth’s nonnormative literacy practices are leveraged based on the contestation of a myriad of social factors, which themselves are influenced by political, economic, and social ideologies that constantly shift and are culturally mediated as Black youth enact literacy from one context to another—a dynamic that Street (2000) refers to as an ideological model of literacy. Notwithstanding, opportunity gaps for Black youth are often missed when the instruction and assessment of Black students are based on an autonomous model of literacy (Street, 2000) where literacy practices are conceived of in ways that suggest they can autonomously—without the cultural factors in which they are situated—have an effect on other social and cognitive practices. In doing so, the invisible literacies of Black youth can remain largely untapped during formal instruction and assessment despite clear indications of their existence in students’ experiences across home and school (Dyson, 2015; Heath, 1983; Kiramba, 2017).

Affordances provided via opportunity gaps allow for addressing the literacy needs of Black youth and are particularly important given that these youth must often abandon the home cultures and identities in which their literacy and language practices are embedded and with which they are most familiar as they seek to adopt or reflect the literacies enacted by dominant populations in and beyond schools (Delpit, 1988; Street, 1995). These literacy and language practices, through which Black youth reflect their literacy assets as they engage in linguistic practices such as code-switching, code-meshing, and translanguaging (e.g., Bauer, Colomer, & Wiemelt, 2018; Wheeler & Swords, 2006; Young, 2007) find little to no avenue for expression on measures of standardized literacy. Through code-switching, Black students have been encouraged to engage in contrastive analysis where they identified differences in grammar between how they use language at school and in the home so they can determine which language style to enact based on where they are, the audience they are addressing, and the purpose for which they are communicating (Wheeler & Swords, 2006). Acknowledging certain limitations of code-switching, Black students have also been urged to practice code-meshing by “fus[ing]” their “standard [language] with native speech writing to color their writing with what they bring from home” (p. 64). Code-meshing allowed these youth to extend vocabulary on a national scale, expand the rhetorical styles available for use, enhance their peers’ capacity for understanding linguistic difference, and reflect their “multidialectal” nature (Young, 2007, p. 65). More recent advances that extend beyond code-switching and code-meshing have acknowledged translanguaging (García & Lin, 2016) in the literacy practices of Black students who draw simultaneously from their home and academic language practices, reflecting metalinguistic awareness across home, school, and community (Bauer et al., 2018).

Yet, literacy assessments such as PISA are not designed to capture such linguistic or literate complexity nor do they seem capable of reflecting how Black students leverage their multidialectism and multilingualism (Bauer et al., 2018; Smith, 2016; Smith et al., 2018). Moreover, the normative standards by which such assessments are governed tend to be more aligned with those of the dominant culture that implicitly and inadvertently reinforces an autonomous model of literacy in schools (Brooks, 2016; Mitchell, 2013; Smith et al., 2018). Addressing opportunity gaps in literacy teaching, learning, and assessment are thus critical for helping Black youth navigate tensions between their own legitimate linguistic repertoires from the home and the affordances that seem to be provided by dominant linguistic codes such as those privileged by standardized literacy assessments in schools.

For Black youth, adequately addressing opportunities through which they can reflect learning during the assessment of their literacies can be particularly complex given that they sometimes experience a “double consciousness” akin to “racial schizophrenia” where their vision of self is largely mediated by the lens through which they are viewed by others (Du Bois, 1994; Young, 2007). This dissonance, which can be attributed to their status as underrepresented students persisting for so long in schooling processes where they are repeatedly torn between participating in two different but [supposedly] oppositional cultures simultaneously (Ogbu, 2014), is further exacerbated as Black youth’s literacies are repeatedly subjected to discrimination. For instance, discrimination against Black youth in schools often occurs in the form of linguicism (Agyepong, 2013; Awokoya, 2009) based on dominant monoglossic norms that reinforce one standard language (Flores & Schissel, 2014), and based on linguistic racism (Baker-Bell, 2017) that arises from a dominant raciolinguistic ideology (Rosa & Flores, 2017) where youth, as well as their languages, are racialized in negative ways even when they make the effort to approximate supposedly accepted language forms (Smith, In press a). In the absence of efforts to address opportunities presented by the language and literate repertoires of Black youth (Baker-Bell, Stanbrough, & Everett, 2017), they repeatedly question their language, literacies, and legitimacy as speakers and as persons whose linguistic repertoires coupled with their race largely deviate from that of the dominant culture (Rosa & Flores, 2017; Smith, In press b).

Given that literacy assessment can allow for opportunities that influence the success of Black youth, the interrelated constructs proposed in Milner’s framework—color blindness, cultural conflicts, meritocracy, deficit mindsets, low expectations, and context-neutral mindsets and practices—though typically used generally to examine educational performance, serve in this study as a basis for identifying opportunities in the literacy assessment of Black youth.

Method

This study is based on a secondary analysis of public data retrieved from the PISA 2012 assessment. PISA, administered by the OECD, is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate the literacy of adolescent youth in mathematics, reading, collaborative problem-solving, and finance across OECD and non-OECD nations. Unlike academic achievement assessments such as the NAEP and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) that evaluate reading-related skills, PISA assesses the degree to which students are able to apply what they have learned about reading and literacy (OECD, 2006, 2013), an approach that seems to be somewhat aligned with conceptions of literacy as socially situated and culturally informed (Smith et al., 2018; Street, 2000). Besides assessment results, PISA provides a wide array of demographic and sampling-related information for each student as well as country-level samples that are nationally representative of their target populations, allowing for statistical results with wider generalizability.

Sample

Approximately 510,000 students, representing about 28 million 15-year-old youth across 65 economies participated in the PISA 2012 survey (OECD, 2013). For the U.S. national sample, schools were selected with a probability proportionate to the school’s estimated enrollment of 15-year-old students within each of eight strata formed by school type (public or private) and region of the United States (Northeast, Central, West, Southeast). A total of 50 students were then randomly drawn from each of 240 selected schools. The sample was finalized based on adherence to the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) statistical standards that require the response rate be at least 80% of sampled schools and at least 85% of all sampled students across responding schools (NCES, 2002).

Of 4,978 students in the U.S. sample who were administered either the paper- or computer-based reading literacy assessment, 12.9% (n = 641) were Black. These 641 students formed the analysis sample for the current study. Of this Black population, 82.2% (n = 527) were Black American (i.e., African American), 12.9% (n = 83) were Black immigrants, and 4.8% (n = 31) did not provide this information. Unfortunately, this sample size of Black students to whom PISA was administered in the United States, though disaggregated to some degree and based on an international literacy assessment, was comparatively smaller than the total sample size of U.S. students for the overall PISA 2012 administration. All students in the study sample were 15 years old—between Grades 7 and 11—at the time of assessment.

Measures

The measures analyzed for this study were included in the PISA 2012 Student Questionnaire. Our analysis involved the measures of reading literacy, self-identity of speaking language (i.e., language self-identification), immigration status, and four sociodemographic variables.

In using reading literacy as a variable, we noted its consideration by OECD as a “literacy” assessment that evaluates students’ readiness for everyday reading-related tasks that they may face after leaving school. As noted previously, PISA does not measure reading-related skills that students have mastered at school but rather it seeks to measure students’ capability to put their knowledge into practical use (OECD, 2006, 2013). Specifically, PISA reading literacy items are designed to gauge cognitive processes that involve the retrieval of information, the creation of broad understandings, the development of interpretations, and the reflection and evaluation of text content and form across various text mediums, formats, genres, and contexts. PISA provides five plausible values for a student’s reading literacy score because each student completes only a subset of the assessment items (Wu, 2005).

Self-identity of speaking language represented students’ identity of themselves as “English as a first language” (i.e., native English speakers) or ‘nonnative’ speakers of English language. If the language the student primarily spoke at home was English, which is the national standard language in the United States, self-identity was categorized as native English speaker; otherwise, nonnative English speaker.

For immigration status, students were considered as Black native if they were Black, born in the United States, and if one or both of their parents were born in the United States. Students were considered as Black immigrant if they were Black, had migrated to the United States, or if both of their parents were born outside of the United States (i.e., first- or second-generation immigrants).

Sociodemographic variables included students’ gender (male or female), Grade (9, 10, or 11), school type (public or private), and SES. OECD formulated a single index for SES that taps into five different domains: parental education, parental occupation, cultural possessions owned by the student’s family, family wealth, and availability of educational resources at home. Prior to analysis, the SES index was standardized across countries to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.

Analysis

All analyses were completed using intsvy R package (Caro & Biecek, 2015). Missing data were handled by listwise deletion in the current version of intsvy package. Bivariate tests and general linear modeling were conducted to answer the research questions of the study, properly handling PISA’s complex sampling design (i.e., incorporating Jackknife replicate weights into the analysis). Specifically, a chi-square test was used to examine the association between immigration status and self-identity of speaking language (RQ1). Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were constructed to compare reading literacy score between Black native (i.e., American) youth and Black immigrant youth (RQ2), and between native English-speaking (“English as a first language”) Black American youth, and Black immigrant youth (RQ3), with and without accounting for students’ sociodemographic characteristics as covariates. The covariates, when controlled for, can reduce (residual) variance in reading literacy score that is not explained by immigration status, thereby allowing for a more accurate inference about the Black American versus Black immigrant difference in reading literacy.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics of all study variables are presented as a composite in Table 1, stratified by immigration status and self-identity of speaking language. About 86% (n = 527) of the sample were Black native (i.e., African American) and about 14% (n = 83) were Black immigrant.

Table 1.

Overall Descriptive Statistics of Study Variables.

Immigration status	Self-identity	n (%)	Reading literacy	Female	Grade 9	Grade 10	Grade 11	Private school	SES
Black Native (African American)	NS	520 (98.7)	440.18 (91.74)	240 (99.6%)	94 (100%)	335 (98.2%)	91 (98.9%)	85 (98.8%)	−0.03 (0.97)
	NNS	3 (0.6)	423.43 (16.12)	1 (0.4%)	0 (0%)	3 (0.9%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	−1.91 (1.82)
	Missing	4 (0.8)	364.28 (49.97)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	3 (0.9%)	1 (0.1%)	1 (1.2%)	−0.05 (0.85)
	Total	527 (100)	439.63 (91.51)	241 (100%)	94 (100%)	341 (100%)	92 (100%)	86 (100%)	−0.04 (0.98)
Black Immigrant	NS	64 (77.1)	490.85 (92.30)	36 (78.3%)	6 (100%)	46 (80.7%)	12 (60%)	12 (92.3%)	0.34 (0.91)
	NNS	14 (16.9)	436.10 (58.50)	9 (19.6%)	0 (0%)	7 (12.3%)	7 (35%)	1 (7.7%)	−0.37 (1.11)
	Missing	5 (6.0)	463.38 (54.41)	1 (2.2%)	0 (0%)	4 (7%)	1 (5%)	0 (0%)	−0.41 (1.43)
	Total	83 (100)	480.37 (87.80)	46 (100%)	6 (100%)	57 (100%)	20 (100%)	13 (100%)	0.17 (1.04)
Missing		31	393.62(87.44)	8	5	26	0	3	−0.15(1.16)
Total		641	442.79(92.57)	295	105	424	112	102	−0.02(1.00)

Note. SES = socioeconomic status; NS = native English speakers; NNS = nonnative English speakers; n (%); M (SD).

In this sample, there were more males (n = 285, 54%) than females among the Black native youth and fewer males (n = 37, 45%) than females among the Black immigrant youth. The majority of the sample, about 65% (n = 341) of the Black American youth and about 69% (n = 57) of the Black immigrant youth, were in the median grade (Grade 10). Less than one fifth of the Black youth (n = 99, 16%) were enrolled in private schools—about 17% (n = 97) of the native English speakers (i.e., English as a first language) speakers and about 6% (n = 1) of the nonnative speakers of English language. Black American students (M = −0.04, SD = 0.98) had lower SES than Black immigrant students (M = 0.17, SD = 1.04), although this difference was not significant (z = 0.21, p = .17). However, native English speakers (M = 0.00, SD = 0.98) had significantly higher SES than nonnative English speakers (M = −0.67, SD = 0.67; z = 2.06, p < .05).

The average reading literacy score was 442.79 (SD = 92.57) for the study sample, which was lower than the U.S. average score of 497.58. Native English speakers (M = 443.54, SD = 93.59) outperformed nonnative English speakers (M = 433.64, SD = 53.56) on reading literacy but the difference was not significant (z = 9.90, p = .58). Interestingly, Black immigrant students (M = 480.37, SD = 87.80) showed significantly greater performance in reading literacy than Black American students (M = 439.63, SD = 91.51; z = 40.74, p < .01).

Chi-Square Test

Almost all (n = 520, 99%) of the Black American youth identified themselves as “English as a first language” (i.e., native English) speakers rather than nonnative speakers of English language, whereas only about 84% (n = 64) of the Black immigrant youth did so. The result of the chi-square test confirmed that immigration status was significantly associated with self-identity of speaking language (χ²(1) = 68.37, p < .001; RQ1).

Regression

Table 2 presents the regression results of comparing the reading literacy score between Black American youth and Black immigrant youth (RQ2). Without any covariates in the model, it was found that Black American youth had significantly lower performance in reading literacy than Black immigrant youth (p < .01). When students’ sociodemographic characteristics (gender, grade, school type, and SES) were accounted for in a subsequent model, the difference in reading literacy remained significant (p < .05). That is, after reducing some variability in students’ reading literacy that is attributable to sociodemographic factors, students’ immigration status still had a statistically significant effect on their performance. In terms of the covariates, gender, grade, and SES had positive and significant effects on reading literacy. Female students had significantly higher scores than male students, and upper grades and higher SES were significantly associated with higher scores (all p < .001).

Table 2.

Regression Results for Total Sample of Black Youth.

Models	N (after listwise deletion)	Immigrant	Female	Grade	Private school	SES	R ²
Without covariates	610	40.74** (12.71)	—	—	—	—	.02
With covariates	598	24.50* (10.18)	44.58*** (7.86)	39.90*** (7.61)	13.54(13.10)	22.86*** (4.91)	.27

Note. Parameters of variables are reported in the format as [Coefficient^Sig. (Std Error)]. SES = socioeconomic status.

Significance level: *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

The regression results for the subsample of “English as a first language” (i.e., native English) speakers are presented in Table 3 (RQ3). Similar to the results in the total sample, native English-speaking Black immigrant youth significantly outperformed native English-speaking Black American youth on reading literacy, either with or without controlling for their sociodemographic characteristics (p < .001 and p < .05, respectively). Female native English speakers had significantly higher scores than male native English speakers. Upper grades and higher SES status were significantly associated with higher scores (both p < .001). Unlike in the total sample, native English speakers enrolled in private schools significantly outperformed their peers in public schools (p < .001) on reading literacy.

Table 3.

Regression Results for Subsample of Native-Speaking Black Youth.

Models	N (after listwise deletion)	Immigrant	Female	Grade	Private school	SES	R ²
Without covariates	584	50.68*** (14.87)	—	—	—	—	.03
With covariates	572	31.48* (12.12)	43.43*** (7.86)	42.34*** (7.66)	12.18*** (13.27)	23.57*** (4.98)	.28

Note. Parameters of variables are reported in the format as [Coefficient^Sig. (Std Error)]. SES = socioeconomic status.

Significance level: *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Discussion

The indication in this study that most Black immigrant students tend to speak multiple languages and/or dialects but significantly outperformed their Black American peers who also often speak an English dialect along with and sometimes without “Standard English” is critical as it confirms recent and previous indications about disparities in achievement between the two populations (Ogbu, 1987; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017). Notwithstanding, this finding raises questions about the ways in which language mediates literacy achievement for Black subpopulations of youth. As has been previously documented, students’ home languages and dialects play a key role in predicting their academic success and, specifically, their literacy learning and assessment results (e.g., Abedi, 2017; Bauer et al., 2017; Faulkner-Bond & Sireci, 2015; Mislevy & Duran, 2014; Siegel, 2012; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2013). And evidence has consistently pointed to the role of AAL as a key predictor in the literacy outcomes of Black American youth (e.g., Craig et al., 2009). The question that arises then is this—to what degree is the “(under)performance” of Black “English-speaking” American students explained by English dialectal differences, on the one hand, and hypothesized to be the result of (discrimination against) Black youth’s English dialectal differences, on the other (see Goodman, 1972; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2012)?

While it may be offered that a difference in English language learning is a basis for this disparity in achievement across Black subpopulations, in many African as well as English-speaking Caribbean countries, English functions as an official, and not foreign language in much the same way that this occurs in the United States. Alternatively, the argument can be put forward that language self-identification on PISA provides an opportunity for typically multilingual Black immigrants from Africa to classify as “English as a first language” or ‘nonnative’ English speakers when an option is not provided for typically bidialectal Black Americans or their Black bidialectal immigrant peers to classify as “English as a second dialect” speakers. In response to such an argument, and as previous research has suggested (see Smith et al., 2018), provisions for language self-identification—the way students identify the language they speak on an assessment—may position Black American students as low performing on the PISA reading literacy assessment, which is administered in Standard English based on the privileging of a monoglossic Standard American English (SAE) norm (Flores & Schissel, 2014). This norm, as Smith (In press b) has recently observed, does not only discriminate against nonstandardized Englishes such as AAL but it also denigrates even standardized Englishes that appear to be different from SAE. Such positioning of Black American youth, then, limits interpretations that can be made about their performance given that they tend to be speakers of AAL and not SAE (Baker-Bell, 2013). In turn, and raising concerns of fairness, language self-identification for Black Caribbean immigrant youth who are typically also bidialectal (Winer, 2006) but who are not able to demonstrate this bidialectalism on the PISA reading literacy assessment may, therefore, also reflect results interpreted based on a language status that is incorrect.

This observation about misrepresentation arising from language self-identification is potentially justifiable considering the fact that though Black native English speakers outperformed Black nonnative English speakers overall, this outperformance was moderate and not statistically significant. Such a concern is worth pursuing given the indications by Winer (2006) that the language differences of Caribbean immigrants are significantly different from their Black American counterparts. Pursuing this concern also seems viable given the tendency of Black immigrants to possess more linguistic repertoires than their Black Caribbean and American counterparts and points to the likelihood that little disparity may actually exist in the ways in which the “English as a first language” status impacts the reading literacy achievement of Black American as compared with Black immigrant youth. In the absence of consideration to such a visible difference in the achievement of Black youth, it is possible that deficit mindsets (Milner, 2012) about Black American students’ dialects can persist, obstructing literacy opportunities for these youth.

In relation to the significant outperformance of Black American students by their Black immigrant peers, the findings suggest a likelihood that the cultural stress under which Black immigrants are known to function after migrating to the United States (Farah, 2015; Haynes, 2014; Rong & Fitchett, 2008; Smith, 2016) seems to be buffered sufficiently to allow these youth to maintain a level of performance that exceeds that of their Black American peers both before and after accounting for sociodemographic factors including gender, grade, school type, and SES. The strong work ethic often adopted by Black immigrants in the United States coupled with their desire to sometimes distance themselves from “(under)performing” Black Americans while seeking White approval (Rong & Fitchett, 2008) may explain why Black immigrant students persist regardless of insurmountable discrimination. It is possible, too, that this immigrant work ethic, often based on the meritocratic view (Milner, 2012) that if one works hard enough, one will achieve success, is harnessed and seems effective for Black immigrants who have not, from birth, been subjected to the persistent racial denigration and deprivation of opportunity experienced by their Black American peers. This is not to say that the factors identified above do not negatively influence the achievement of Black immigrants (Mwangi & English, 2017); as Kumi-Yeboah (2018) and others have shown, Black African immigrant youth face significant racial, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural discrimination. Rather, the indications presented here suggest that there appear to be other factors, which, when leveraged in the lives of Black immigrant youth, and which are inadequately accounted for on achievement measures, may account for their ability to overcome challenges that nonetheless remain an obstacle for Black American literacy performance.

While scholars (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Ogbu, 1987, 2014) have suggested that it is the fear of “acting White” as well as the distinction between a cultural frame of reference and identities reflected by “indigenous” as opposed to “immigrant minorities” that explain the differences in achievement between populations such as the Black youth in this study, the social, economic, political, and literate contexts within which previous examinations of such youth were conducted are significantly different to those of the contemporary landscape. The current landscape reflects a significant, visible, and relentless exacerbation of racialized tensions in the media in real time, a persistent and direct opposition to Blackness and to immigration in the United States, and a corresponding insistence on responses such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Black Panther, and literate scholarship that constantly invite Black and immigrant youth to use literacies in ways that reflect their true voices and identities (e.g., Baker-Bell, 2013; Caraballo, Lozenski, Lyiscott, Morrell, 2017; Dancy et al., 2018; Sexton, 2018; Sherkat & Lehman, 2018; Young, 2007). Such a change in landscape surely raises questions about the degree to which “double consciousness,” “racial schizophrenia” (Du Bois, 1994; Young, 2007), or a fear of “acting White” (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986) are characteristic of emerging generations of Black youth who increasingly appear to highlight their Blackness, literate intelligence, and immigrant heritage as central to their survival. Potential repercussions of such changes seem possible even in situations where expectations of achievement made based on race for Black immigrants differ from how these are leveraged for their Black American peers (see Upkopodu, 2018; Warikoo, Sinclair, Fei, & Jacoby-Senghor, 2016).

Many have identified factors such as parental support, identity, community, and resilience (e.g., Freeman, 2016; Haynes, 2014; Rong & Fitchett, 2008; Wilson-Akubude, 2016) as crucial to achievement in the experiences of Black immigrant and Black American students. Although largely acknowledged qualitatively, these factors seem less capable of being accounted for on quantitative large-scale measures such as PISA. Even when attempts are made to account for the direct impact of such factors on quantitative measures, as is the case of parental and family resources in the PISA SES variable, such elements tend to be wrapped up as a composite and not independently considered. The way in which elements such as these are represented in large-scale literacy measures such as PISA can potentially explain why Black American students performed significantly lower than their Black immigrant peers despite what many consider to be fewer language and cultural barriers by Black American youth in their native homeland of the U.S. As seen in the findings from this study, higher SES was significantly and positively correlated with higher reading literacy scores, mirroring findings from previous research among fourth-grade students (Gilbert, 2009). That such barriers play a less significant role in the literacy achievement of Black immigrant youth than they do for the Black American students in this study represents a window of opportunity lost by what appears to be a context-neutral mindset (Milner, 2012) reflected in a lack of consideration of certain potent out-of-school factors that may significantly impact achievement.

Beyond the concerns raised above, it is noteworthy that even when considered as a homogeneous group in this study, all Black students’ achievement on average (442.79) falls significantly short of the U.S. average (497.58), thus signaling “(under)performance” for the entire Black student sample. In other words, the notion that there seem to be other factors affecting Black American students’ achievement that are yet unaccounted for by the corpus of achievement data from our traditional comparisons of these students with their White counterparts seems to also apply to Black immigrant students given that these students, too, despite evidence that they tend to “outperform” their Black American peers, ‘failed’, as a subgroup to meet the standard for PISA reading literacy performance set by OECD. This finding confirms recent results of academic achievement conducted with Black African youth that challenge the “new model minority myth” attached to Black African immigrants on the basis that, much like their Black American peers, they, too, can sometimes face significant challenges with overall academic performance and achievement (Upkopodu, 2018).

Admittedly, and in keeping with the call for students’ representations of knowledge, and of literacy, to be less representative of Eurocentrism (Banks, 2016; Shepard, 2016; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017), the literacy definition used by PISA to undergird questions based on literacy functionality claims to focus on application as opposed to literacy mastery, which at first glance, seems to align with contemporary notions of literacy as socially and culturally situated (Street, 2005), suggesting that the assessment measure may be more aligned with the home and cultural literacies of Black youth. Yet, the degree to which such alignment is present remains questionable, because, as the findings in this study show, even under circumstances where literacy application was emphasized over mastery, both Black American and Black immigrant students ‘failed’ to meet the OECD’s average literacy standard.

As Ogbu (1987, 2014) has noted, “high-achieving” youth from underrepresented backgrounds do not necessarily demonstrate cultural characteristics similar to that of their dominant-group peers even when they perform as well as or better than these peers. We both interrogate and extend this claim based on the current study by asserting that Black youth’s literacy achievement should not depend primarily on their performance on an assessment defined by the dominant group. In doing so, we affirm that Milner’s (2012) assertion of color blindness which obscures students’ differences and assets by virtue of their (Black) race and racialized language (Flores & Rosa, 2017) seems visible here in that Eurocentric ways of knowing based on a dominant culture that privileges an autonomous model of literacy, appear to underlie the PISA reading literacy assessment. This, in turn, results in the obscuring of opportunities that assessments can provide for youth to reflect literacy based on an ideological perspective (Street, 2000).

Inadvertently then, the PISA reading literacy assessment, which has significant potential to determine how the literacies of Black, and other underrepresented youth are represented nationally, appears to perpetuate a situation where there is a lack of opportunity for all Black subgroups. Such color blindness appears to reinforce the racial superiority of certain students, their languages, and their literacies over that of others in literacy research based on a monoglossic norm that values only certain Englishes, and a raciolinguistic ideology that sanctions and reinforces certain epistemologies, many of which, this study suggests, continue to be touted as an “achievement gap” that dehumanizes Black students and deprives them of academic opportunity (Flores & Schissel, 2014; Rosa & Flores, 2017; Paris & Winn, 2014; Willis, 2015).

Conclusion

Black youth’s literacy achievement has been partially clarified through the lens of the Black-White “achievement gap” and must be better understood by examining their performance within the Black student population. Our study’s significance lies in its ability to provide novel insights regarding previous contentions surrounding disparities between American and immigrant youth. We identify three pertinent opportunities (Milner, 2012) for further exploration and clarification. First, literacy assessment and interpretations of literacy assessment for Black American youth must be done by allowing them to appropriately classify as bilingual, bidialectal, multilingual, or multidialectal speakers given that the language of the test (i.e., SAE) often tends not to be their first dialect. Second, and in keeping with the previous opportunity, Black American students must be provided with assessments that allow them to reflect their literacies based on an ideological as opposed to an autonomous approach that continues to pervade local district state and national literacy assessments in the United States. Such a recommendation is in keeping with previous calls for formative and summative literacy assessments that are adjusted, both in their administration and interpretation, to reflect the language difference that students bring to specific areas of literacy (see Abedi, 2017; Abedi, Hofstetter, & Lord, 2004; Bauer, 1998). Third, and along with making provision for language self-identification, it will be necessary to disaggregate the literacy data of Black immigrant and Black American youth at local, state, district, and national levels in much the same way that Waters (2014) has recently called for social scientists’ to differentiate data among racial “minorities”, in order to better determine which elements of Black students’ dialects in tandem with sociodemographic elements, most influence their literacy achievement. Implementing mechanisms for disaggregating data based on these premises can allow us to move beyond arguments and interventions that focus largely on a Black-White “achievement gap” and, instead, provide an opportunity to more accurately understand the achievement of this second largest K-12 population, not as comparative objects, but as humans (Paris & Winn, 2014) in their own right.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

Patriann Smith is now affiliated with Department of Teaching and Learning, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Patriann Smith

Author Biographies

Patriann Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of South Florida, focuses on cross-cultural and cross-linguistic considerations for literacy instruction and assessment in the learning and experiences of Black immigrant adolescents and educators.

Alex Kumi-Yeboah, PhD, an assistant professor at the State University of New York–Albany, focuses on diversity in online teaching and learning as well as the educational experiences of Black immigrant youth.

Rong Chang, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Houston, demonstrates methodological expertise with multiwave, multi-informant data sets.

Jaehoon Lee, PhD, an assistant professor and co-director of the Institute for Measurement, Methodology, Analysis, and Policy (IMMAP) at Texas Tech University, has a broad background in methodology, with specific training and expertise in modern research design and advanced statistical methods. Recent research involves evaluating confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models and Bayesian structural equation models (SEM) with regard to data environments and prior distributions.

Paul Frazier, EdD, chief diversity and inclusion officer at the University of South Alabama, focuses on the achievement of African American males.

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