Official statistics from the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have once again confirmed that, despite decades of affirmative action and billions of dollars of set-asides, black students still underperform academically when compared to whites

The new NCES study, titled “School Composition and the Black–White Achievement Gap” made a point of studying the lack of black academic achievement in schools that were “predominantly black” and those in which blacks were a minority. The report calls this distinction the “Black student density” and used the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 8 mathematics assessment data. Black students at the national level, on average, scored 30 points lower than their White peers in 2011. Among the results highlighted in the report, the study indicates that the achievement gap between black and white students remains whether schools fall in the highest density category (that its, schools that are composed of at least 60% black students) or the lowest density category (i.e., schools that are composed of less than or equal to 20% black students).