Challenge
Academic Performance at the Intersection of Ethnicity and Gender
Statistically, white and Black boys experience the greatest drops in their grade point averages and the maintenance of high academic grades between the eighth and ninth grades and vary across racial/ethnic and gender subgroups.
Higher-achieving middle school Black boys experience the greatest academic declines. White and Black boys also face academic declines before the high school transition, whereas their female student peers experienced academic declines only during the transition to high school.
By identifying the transition to high school as a juncture in which boys’ academic disadvantage widens and high-achieving Black boys lose their academic status at the high school starting gate, it becomes obvious that adopting an intersectional framework that considers both race/ethnicity and gender is vital to the success of current and future generations in order to prevent the profound consequences for social inequality over the life course.