(My bold)
Nah, not ALL Blacks are @ the bottom nor ALL Caucasian/Asians @ the top. What you can see is that the cultures that value learning - most Jewish, most Asian (Japan, China, S. Korea), segments of India TEND to be @ the top of these scores. That suggests that if you surround babies/children with reading & academic culture as they can absorb it, they will tend to perform better academically than their peers. If you continue the process - constantly exposing & raising academic performance each generation, you wind up with a much better academic outcome in the end. (Except that there is no real end, of course.)
So it's something we could all do, in theory. It would mean turning off the idiot box, reading more, & better content - ask a librarian for help, they're always willing to help, in my experience - read the daily paper, talk to your kids about their schoolwork, homework, what they want to do in life, help them along & encourage their academic pursuits. Talk about the wider World outside the family.
Of course, you have to shoehorn all this stuff in with the daily grind. But incremental change will have an effect, & not all children are natural scholars. You do the best you can with what you have, & the time & resources that you have to hand. But public libraries are there, you've paid for them, you might as well enjoy what they're there to offer. The same for museums, parks, other recreation.
It's possible to raise academic performance. Mostly it's a question of mindedness - of keeping the end in mind & finding ways to approach it.
