How Gender Impacts the Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT

Last week JBHE reported that the racial gap in SAT scores remained virtually unchanged this year and is significantly wider than was the case two years ago.

Contrary to the common stereotype, black men actually outperform black women on the SAT. The mean combined score on the critical reading and mathematics sections of the SAT for black men in 2007 was 866. For black women, the mean combined score was 859. Black women outperformed black men on the critical reading section of the test but trailed black men by a wide margin on the mathematics section of the SAT.

However, when we compare African-American scores to white scores, we find a large racial gap among men. The black-white scoring gap for men on the combined SAT this year is 216 points. The racial scoring gap for women is significantly lower at 186 points.

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