It is essential to keep in mind what these data do and do not tell us. They indicate only that the average differences between racial and ethnic groups are substantial. But these average differences, even when very large, tell us nothing about individual students. The variability within any of these racial or ethnic groups is very large, almost as large as in the student population as a whole. There are some black and Hispanic students who score very high relative to the distribution of white students, and there are Asian American students who score well below the white average. Also, these
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