The Obama Effect

Apparently President Obama’s success may not only raise human spirits but students’ grade point averages as well.

The New York Times reported that researchers recently discovered a phenomenon they call the “Obama Effect,” after comparing test results between black and white students before and after his nomination last year. “Obama is obviously inspirational, but we wondered whether he could contribute to an improvement in something as important as black test-taking,” said Vanderbilt management professor Ray Friedman.

He and his two academic cohorts were amazed when the “performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.”

Previous results showed that black students performed worse on tests that required them to fill out a form that identified them by race. The current study consisted of 20 questions from the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)administered to a total of “84 blacks and 388 whites” during the 2008 presidential campaign. Their educational levels ranged from “high school dropout to Ph.D.”

Before Obama’s nomination, results showed that white students answered 12 out of 20 questions correctly compared to about 8.5 correct for black students.

After Obama’s nomination, “black performance improved, rendering the white-black gap ‘statistically nonsignificant,’” said Dr. Friedman.

Although some testing experts are impressed by the results, G. Gage Kingsbury from the Northwest Evaluation Association noted that he’d like to “see another study replicating their results before I get too excited about it.”

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

Deborah Lambert