An in-class writing assignment designed to boost students' sense
of identity and personal integrity reduced the achievement gap
between African-American and nonminority students by 40 percent,
according to a new study by a University of Colorado at Boulder
researcher. The results suggest that targeted psychological
interventions on a wider scale could potentially help narrow the
racial achievement gap among U.S. students, according to
Associate Professor Geoffrey Cohen of CU-Boulder's psychology
department and his fellow principal investigator Julio Garcia of
Yale University's psychology department. "Our research was based
on the idea that ethnic minority students experience, on
average, higher levels of stress in the classroom," Cohen said.
"This is because they are concerned that if they do poorly it
could confirm the negative stereotype about the intellectual
ability of their racial group. We all know from personal
experience that too much stress is bad for performance." The
study appears in the Sept. 1 is