Anti-black bias is an important focal point in conversations about the sources of racial inequality in schools. Much of the empirical research on this issue has focused on the racial biases of individual teachers, finding that racial inequality in student outcomes is generally worse when teachers have more racial bias. Less is known, however, about how racial inequality in schools relates to anti-black biases that play out at a larger scale within communities. This study begins to fill this gap by examining the relationship between county-level estimates of racial bias and black-white test score gaps in U.S. schools. Data from over 1 million respondents from across the United States who completed an online survey of explicit and implicit racial attitudes were combined with data from the Education Opportunity Project covering over 300 million test scores from U.S. schoolchildren in grades 3 through 8. Results indicated that counties with higher levels of racial bias had larger black-white test score disparities. The magnitude of these associations was on par with other widely accepted predictors of racial test score gaps, including racial gaps in family income and racial gaps in single parenthood. This study also found that the observed relation between collective rates of racial bias and racial test score gaps was largely accounted for when controlling for between-school segregation and racial gaps in discipline, gifted assignment, and special education placement. This pattern is consistent with a theoretical model in which collective rates of racial bias relate to educational opportunity through sorting mechanisms that operate both within and beyond schools.

在关于学校种族不平等根源的对话中，反黑人偏见是一个重要的焦点。关于这个问题的许多实证研究都集中在个别教师的种族偏见上，发现当教师有更多种族偏见时，学生成绩中的种族不平等通常会更糟。然而，关于学校中的种族不平等如何与社区内更大规模发生的反黑人偏见有关，我们知之甚少。本研究开始通过检查美国学校中县级种族偏见估计与黑白测试分数差距之间的关系来填补这一空白。来自美国各地的超过 100 万名完成了显性和隐性种族态度在线调查的受访者的数据与来自教育机会项目的数据相结合，这些数据涵盖了美国 3 至 8 年级学童的 3 亿多考试成绩。结果表明，各县种族偏见水平越高，黑白测试分数差异越大。这些关联的程度与其他被广泛接受的种族测试分数差距预测指标相当，包括家庭收入的种族差距和单亲的种族差距。这项研究还发现，在控制校际隔离和纪律、天才作业、和特殊教育安置。这种模式与理论模型一致，在该模型中，种族偏见的集体比率通过在学校内外运作的分类机制与教育机会相关。