_National _District Median Scores_ _Grade_ _Subject_ Norm_ _55-56_ _56-57_ _57-58_ _58-59_ 3 Paragraph meaning 3.5 2.3 2.5 2.9 3.1 3 Word meaning 3.5 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.1 3 Spelling 3.5 2.5 3.0 3.1 3.2 3 Arith. reasoning 3.5 2.4 2.8 2.8 3.2 3 Arith. computation 3.5 2.6 2.7 2.9 3.2 5 Paragraph meaning 5.1 3.8 4.1 4.3 4.2 5 Word meaning 5.1 4.1 4.5 4.6 4.4 5 Language 5.1 4.2 4.5 4.6 4.4 5 Spelling 5.1 4.2 4.3 4.8 4.5 5 Arith. reasoning 5.1 4.2 4.5 4.6 4.5 5 Arith. computation 5.1 3.9 4.1 4.6 4.1 It should not escape notice that the Washington children whose median scores are shown in the foregoing table never had known a day of legally segregated schooling. The Negro pupils here tested never had suffered the school discrimination likely to affect their hearts and minds in a fashion never to be undone. These pupils, on the contrary, had had the benefit of all the special attention that could be given them by a school administration frantically eager to demonstrate the glories of integration. No resource of guidance and special teaching, no visual aid or teaching technique had been denied them. Yet there are the scores: Not a single test in Washington’s third and fifth grades produced a median equal to the national norm. The fifth-graders, backsliding, did not even equal fifth-grade scores the preceding year. It is perhaps needless to dwell further upon the findings of intelligence and achievement tests beyond commenting briefly upon some of the flimsy efforts the equalitarians make to discredit them. One objection is that the Negro child has no “motivation” to do well on them; but at the younger age levels especially, this is pure conjecture. It also is complained that frequently the tests are administered to Negro children by white examiners, and that an essential rapport thereby is denied them; but this was not true of the tests in Washington, and it has not been true of many other investigations. The most frequent objection is that tests tend to compare white and colored children of unequal social and economic background; but abundant evidence is available of investigations in which subjects have been “paired” by every imaginable criterion, and almost without exception these tests show the same lamentable contrasts in white and Negro scores.