Obama "Effect" on Test Takers

This NYTimes article, Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers, is a bit startling. It's exciting, don't get me wrong, but it leaves me unsettled and wondering how its message might be interpreted in schools where the teaching quality already wanes. 

Researchers have documented this "Obama effect" via a 20 question test given to black and white students both before and after Obama's nomination. Before Obama's nomination, a typical achievement gap emerged as white students' scores proved significantly higher than black students' scores. After Obama's nomination, that same 20 question test given to both black and white students yielded results that showed no sign of an achievement gap between the two groups of students. Black students performed significantly higher that time around. According to the article, the research indicates that Obama has "helped blacks overcome anxieties about racial stereotypes that had been shown, in earlier research, to lower the test- taking proficiency of African Americans..." Specifically, the earlier test results (Pre-Obama) showed white students answering 12 correct out of 20 compared to only 8.5 correct for black students. Post-Obama, black performance improved, which rendered that former "white-black gap 'statistically nonsignificant'".

Further studies will prove whether this phenomenon has a lasting effect. It makes sense to link anxiety, self-image and expectations to test performance. But, how could mending self-esteem possibly reverse all the effects of teachers who preach low expectations in their classrooms? How could this one factor (momentous and signifiant as his presidency may be) reverse the failed policy and accountability and teacher quality that has been at the core of the achievement gap from the start?

I want these results to be true. I want these results to translate to all pockets of the classroom, including all the high-stakes standardized tests that hold students back from the next grade. But, I don't want this study to discount the work we still have to do on the ground. I'm a believer that Obama means amazing things, but he shouldn't mean that the only thing holding black students back in the classroom was the absence of an African American's presence in the White House. That would discount the legislation and leadership Obama has to offer. It would make the mending of our deep and cavernous achievement gap simple and finished. This study is interesting. And it's really important. But it seems to imply that the achievement (or lack of achievement) of African American students simply resides in a student's self-esteem or ability to be inspired or his sheer willpower to achieve. And isn't it much, much more complicated than that?