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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/etc/gap.html
Test Score Gaps

Recent studies have shown that later in life, when those students who make it to college and post-graduate studies are faced with standardized tests such as the SAT and the GRE, new factors come into play which might contribute to the gap. Stanford psychology professor Claude Steele and his colleagues have described what they call "stereotype threat."

According to their research, a student who feels he is part of a group that has been negatively stereotyped is likely to perform less well in a situation in which he thinks that people might evaluate him through that stereotype than in a situation in which he feels no such pressure.

Steele has conducted experiments in which he brings in black students and white students to take a standardized test. The first time, he tells the students that they will be taking a test to measure their verbal and reasoning ability. The second time, he tells them the test is an unimportant research tool. Steele has found that the black students do less well when they are told that the test measures their abilities. He also believes that the effects of stereotype threat are strongest for students who are high-achievers and care very much about doing well. They care so much about doing well, Steele says, that they feel that if they don t they will be confirming the negative stereotypes associated with black students. (Read FRONTLINE s interview with Claude Steele and, Steele s article in The Atlantic.)

In another experiment, Steele brought in white and Asian men who were strong in math. He told them the math test they were about to take was one in which Asians do slightly better than whites. The white men performed less well when they were told this, than when they were not. Another experiment showed that stereotype threat also brought down the performance of strong female math students.

Even though it has persisted, the black-white test score gap narrowed between 1976 and the late 1980s. Then it began to widen again.