State Plates
The Pennsylvania Education Plate
In Pennsylvania, education plates turn on attainment — the credentials a population carries. This plate places Black Pennsylvania in the national education geography: the benchmarks below are the published national attainment figures for Black adults, and Pennsylvania's distribution figures — 1.66 million Black residents, 11 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Pennsylvania, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. For Black adults aged 25 and over, the Census Bureau's surveys record a population that has reached near-parity in high school completion while remaining well behind national rates in college completion: about 89 percent hold a high school diploma or higher, and about 25 percent — one in four — hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Held against the national midpoint, Pennsylvania's own rows say how its households stand.
The attainment ladder reads locally in Pennsylvania: the state rows below give the population whose schooling this national pattern frames. At the first step, high school completion, Black adults stand at about 89 percent, close to the national figure of about 90 percent — a convergence that is historically recent and remarkable, given that as late as the mid-twentieth century a majority of Black adults had not completed high school. At the third step, the bachelor's degree, the Black figure of about 25 percent separates from the national figure of about 36 percent and the non-Hispanic White figure of about 39 percent. A benchmark in an atlas does not rank Pennsylvania; it locates it, and that is its whole use here.
For Pennsylvania, the national attainment figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Placed alongside the other groups the Census Bureau reports, the bachelor's-degree ordering reads: Asian adults at roughly 57 percent, non-Hispanic White adults at 39 percent, all adults at 36 percent, Black adults at 25 percent, and Hispanic adults at about 21 percent. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national ladder, and the attainment recorded in Pennsylvania.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Pennsylvania; the benchmark rows are the published national attainment record, labeled as benchmarks. In Pennsylvania, attainment is a stock built over decades, so the national pattern changes slowly — and the size of the state's Black adult population is what turns that pattern into local classrooms, colleges, and workforces.
The Population Behind the Plate
In Pennsylvania, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Pennsylvania holds about 1.66 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in eight of its people, with Black alone at about 1.42 million, or 11 percent. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Pennsylvania.
The attainment ladder reads locally in Pennsylvania: the state rows below give the population whose schooling this national pattern frames. Cheyney University, founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, is the oldest historically Black institution in the United States; Lincoln University, founded in 1854, was the first degree-granting HBCU and educated a generation of African and Caribbean independence-era leaders alongside its American alumni. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where Pennsylvania stands so the plate can be read.
In Pennsylvania, attainment is cumulative: every graduating class adds to it, and nothing subtracts except time. That is why education plates reward patience — the national Black attainment record has risen across every measured generation, and a state like Pennsylvania, holding 1.66 million Black residents, holds its share of that rising stock in its own schools and campuses. The table's benchmark row for Pennsylvania states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis.
The atlas gives this subject its own plate — The Pennsylvania Education Plate — because the published record supports one. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 11%; Black share, alone or in combination: 12.8%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.66 Million. In Pennsylvania, that is the whole of the plate's claim, and it is enough for a reference.
The subject here is The Pennsylvania Education Plate, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. Its table records Black share of the state population (alone): 11%; Black share, alone or in combination: 12.8%. The plate states Pennsylvania's record beside its table and lets the record speak.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 11% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 12.8% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.66 Million |
| United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a high school diploma or higher | 89% |
| United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher | 1 in 4 |
Source: National Center for Education Statistics; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey educational attainment tables. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.