The Black-White Achievement Gap, by Rod Paige and Elaine Witty

The question of the achievement gap between black has vexed educators and community leaders for generations.  Why, after decades of progress in civil rights, does the gap persist?  We have a black president, black CEOs, black leaders, so why do test scores, grades, and academic achievement skew against black children?  Rod Paige, Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, and his sister Elaine Witty, a longtime educator and school of education dean, argue that, as the subtitle states, the achievement gap is "the greatest civil rights issue of our time."  The authors argue that while racial prejudice and discrimination were the "primary barriers impeding African American advancement toward economic, social, and political parity with white Americans" up until the 1960s and 1970s, the primary barrier now is educational underachievement.

The authors are hopeful and optimistic about the prospects for advancement.  Given some historical background, it's little wonder that African-Americans lag behind their peers.  During slavery, slaves were prevented from being educated; in some cases the were legally prohibited from learning to read.  After the end of slavery, few would argue that African Americans have had equal access to educational opportunities.  Even now, we see large discrepancies between many mostly minority schools and districts and mostly white schools and districts.

Paige and Witty are pretty tough on the current national shortage of African American leadership.  They didn't stand behind No Child Left Behind, which, Paige and Witty argue, offers much help in closing the black-white achievement gap.  For them, "party trumps race," so they were not enthusiastic about this Republican-led measure.  In the same way, they have disdainfully rejected the leadership of Michael Steele, the African American chairman of the Republican National Committee.  In other cases, they have rejected specific proposals and actions, such as charter schools in D.C. and voucher measures in Texas, because of partisan concerns, with no concern for the actual success of the children affected by those measures.

The Black-White Achievement Gap is not great literature, by any means.  It's a dry policy book.  Their style is in the flat, quasi-academic style you might expect from this genre: not fully academic, trying to appeal to a broader audience, sometimes pretty readable, but mostly dull.  Paige and Witty do provide plenty of examples of charter, private, and public schools who are enjoying great success with African American students, even students from poor neighborhoods, broken families, and other less-than-ideal learning conditions.  I got first-hand exposure to some of these schools when I attended a "No Excuses"conference in D.C., which featured the founders of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), charter schools who have seen tremendous success with at-risk populations, and other success stories from places where one would expect the black-white gap to be most evident.  I also got first-hand experience of the gap, when I taught at a Fort Worth junior high that was about 50/50 black and hispanic, and was horrible academically.  Unfortunately, I did not do much to close the gap.  I am hopeful, for the sake of my former students, that African American leadership will pick up on Paige and Witty's recommendations and close that gap!