More than any other group, middle-class black students show the greatest academic improvement when they aren't trapped in high-poverty schools, according to a Tribune analysis of Illinois test scores.
In elementary schools where fewer than half the students are low-income, nearly 62 percent of middle-class black students passed last year's state reading test. That's nearly 12 percentage points higher than how they fared in predominantly poor schools. No other group of students -- whites, Hispanics or low-income blacks -- posted as great an improvement, the analysis showed.
But few black children have the option of attending a low-poverty school. In Illinois, three out of every four black students are enrolled in schools where most children are poor.
Educators say the high concentration of black students in poor schools is one of the biggest barriers to closing the stubborn gap in test scores between white and African-American students, an issue at the forefront of national education reforms.
Achieving that goal could require changing rigidly segregated housing patterns or school-district boundaries that isolate black students in poor schools, where they often are taught by less-experienced teachers, encounter lower expectations and watch many peers drop out.
"Anybody ... who is with a lot of low-achieving students is likely to have their achievement pulled down," said John Easton, director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago.
There are few middle-class black neighborhoods large enough to support an entire school, leaving most black families in the state, regardless of income, in schools with high percentages of low-income students. About 73 percent of the state's black students last year attended predominantly low-income schools, compared with 10 percent of white students.
Not surprisingly, the trend extends beyond Illinois. Nationwide, more than 60 percent of black and Hispanic students attend high-poverty schools -- where more than 50 percent of students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch -- compared with 30 percent of Asians and 18 percent of whites, according to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
When Hispanic students escape poor schools, they show similar improvement on the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests (ISAT), though less pronounced than their black peers. But experts believe many low-income Hispanic families do not sign up for the free and reduced-lunch program, which skews test results.
Low-income black students also see more success in low-poverty schools, although it's less than the gains of their middle-class peers.
The Tribune has defined low-income students as those eligible for the lunch program, the only available indicator of a student's economic status. A three-person household qualifies for the program if its total annual income is less than $30,000. For black households in Illinois, the median income is about $31,700.
Many experts believe that most high-poverty schools in Illinois have subpar test results in part because the schools lack resources to deal with the problems that accrue when poor children are clustered together.
These schools typically struggle with higher mobility rates and the difficulties that come when children have unstable home lives. Students may have untreated health issues such as asthma, behavioral problems and other challenges that can make it harder to learn for all children, even those from wealthier families.
Conversely, minority students in low-poverty schools are exposed to higher expectations from peers and teachers, less student and staff turnover, and greater academic competition, often pushed by parents determined to see them succeed, according to education experts.
"If you have a lot of kids from more highly educated families, and the kids come to school with more resources that contribute to the intellectual environment in the classroom, the more likely you are to have an environment more conducive to learning," said William Julius Wilson, a sociology professor at Harvard University.
The link between a school's poverty level and academic success could help explain why black students perform better when enrolled in majority white schools, where the poverty levels tend to be low.
For example, 49 percent of black elementary students enrolled in majority white schools passed reading tests, a result similar to the performance of blacks in low-poverty schools. Meanwhile, only 39 percent of black elementary students in majority black schools passed the same tests.
That's about the passing rate for students in Lincoln Elementary School in south suburban Calumet City, where 86 percent of the school's 1,000 students are low income. Principal Douglas Higgins said the high poverty rate leads to everything from untreated vision problems to low parental involvement and high student mobility.