No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom

Book Overview

Black and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public schools, and their typically poor performance is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in America today--thus, say... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743204468
• ISBN13: 9780743204460
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Black and Latino Parents Should Read This Book

This Christmas many family members and friends of this African-American will be receiving a copy of NO EXCUSES, an honest and necessary book. The authors write that the academic learning gap between the races is "the most important civil rights issue of our time." Amen. Across all age groups, urban and suburban, North and South, affluent and poor, Black and Latino boys and girls are lagging behind whites and far behind Asians. Why is this? The Thernstroms examined the available research literature and data on the impact of family income, parental education levels, school funding, school segregation levels, television viewing (note: Asian teens watch more TV than Whites teens), among others, and found that none of these influences could explain the learning Gap. For instance, poor whites and Asians scored higher than poor blacks and Latinos. Affluent African-American kids performed worse than the rich white kids sitting next to them. The racial makeup of the teacher had no bearing: black children taught by black teachers faired no better than those taught by white teachers. The authors go on to dispel many of the conventional reasons given for inferior academic achievement.Again, why the learning Gap? After reading the book and considering all sides, I must consider two possible reasons. First, the ongoing learning Gap exist because Asians and whites are naturally more intelligent than African-Americans and Latinos. I categorically (as do the authors) reject this notion. It's the argument of conservative and liberal racists and the excuse makers. The second reason for the learning Gap is that Afican-American and Latino parents generally do not establish high enough academic expectations and standards for their children. As a black parent, this is a painful and too-frequent observation I've made, and one that the book's data confirm. Asian children, whose learning Gap over whites is larger than the white-black/Latino gap, the authors point out, are simply expected to work harder and are held accountable by their parents. They don't think they're smarter. They do believe in the time-honored path to success: hard work. Very high standards and high accountability. The Gap is a cultural thing! It must be or the racists and excuse makers are right. Now, how do we close the learning gap? The Thernstroms offer some good advice to change some of the "systems": less bureaucracy, better teachers, school choice, consistent standards, etc. And they discuss in detail the characteristics of a few highly successful schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods. But I'm stuck on how do we make wholesale cultural (African-American and Latino) changes needed to close the Gap? Reading this book and being honest is a start.For more on African-American culture and academic achievement read, Losing the Race by John McWhorter.

If You Care About Our Kids, then READ THIS BOOK!

In cities and suburbs across America, the average black high school graduate possesses the same reading, writing and mathematical competence of an eighth-grader - with Hispanic students not too far behind. This gap in academic achievement between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts is the central civil rights issue of our time. If nothing is done to close it, true racial equality as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned it, will only be just that - a dream. Such is the premise behind Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom's new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning." The authors of "America in Black and White" rely primarily on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as "the nation's report card," in analyzing the academic underachievement of black and Hispanic students. Although an alarming number of all American students are leaving high school with what the NAEP deems Below Basic skills, the Thernstroms show that the numbers for blacks and Latinos are abysmally frightening. In particular, a majority of black students perform Below Basic in five of the seven subjects tested: reading, mathematics, science, writing, U.S. history, civics, and geography. The authors visited handful of what they call "break-the-mold" schools - schools that are doing wonders in providing inner-city black and Hispanic students with a quality education, and have the high test scores to prove it. These little pockets of superb education provide non-stop learning through longer school days, weeks and years, and share a common thread: they are free from the many bureaucratic constraints that stifle educational reform in today's big-city public schools. Furthermore, the teachers and administrators of these maverick schools inform students and parents at the outset that nothing less than high academic and behavioral standards will be accepted; in other words, "no excuses."When it comes to academic success, the authors argue that culture is very important, and spend three chapters analyzing the cultural influences of Asians, Hispanics and African-Americans on educational achievement. The main reason that Asian students by and large are academic wunderkinds is because their parents expect nothing less. The Hispanic experience mirrors that of early 20th Italian immigrants, the authors point out. However, the cultural and demographic reasons for why Latino children academically underperform do not let schools off the hook. Black academic underachievement is discussed at length, and the authors have identified some apparent risk factors. (Although the Thernstroms do give plausible reasons for black underachievement, arguably the best analysis to date of the adverse effects of modern-day black American culture on academic achievement, particularly in middle-class suburban schools, is John McWhorter's "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.") The Thernstroms take on convent

Don't Wait for the Paperback

From the New York Sun (10/14/03)BOOKSAsking Tough Questions, Debunking Old AnswersBy ANDREW WOLFMr.Wolf writes a regular column for the op-ed pages of The New York Sun. `No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" is destined to become one of the most discussed - and despised - books on the nation's crisis in education in quite some time. It will be discussed because it calmly, methodically, and honestly describes the distressing problems that surround the gaps in academic performance among racial groups in America's schools. It will be despised by those unwilling or unable to confront hard and often painful truths. Those who would rather shoot the messengers than address the concerns they raise will find "No Excuses" a convenient target. The authors - Abigail Thernstrom, a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and her husband Stephan, a Harvard history professor - have individually and together authored a small library of well-regarded books on historical and social issues, including 1997's "America in Black and White." The painful and thorny issues concerning race are familiar ground to them. "No Excuses" paints a disturbing picture. The education gap between white children and African-American children is growing, seemingly resistant to the enormous effort and expenditure that has been applied to narrow it. The Thernstroms debunk dozens of the popular notions advanced to explain away the problem and the failures of its supposed cures. They reject the notion that the gap results from "racial isolation" or a lack of school funding. The common prescriptions - smaller class size, and more certified teachers - simply do not work. The belief that merely achieving economic equality will lift the performance of African-American students is, unfortunately, a myth.The reality in schools like those in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent - and integrated - suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, is that moving into the suburbs or achieving middle-class status simply doesn't free black students from a learning gap that leaves them, on average, with a junior-high level of education even after graduating from high school. In suburbs such as Cambridge, Mass., well-meaning school administrators are so intent to narrow the gap that honors programs - thought to be "segregated by race and class" - are being phased out of the curriculum and replaced with a program that mixes high- and low-performing students together. In other words, if they can't raise the level of blacks and Hispanics, the alternative must be to lower the potential for whites and Asians. Despite these misguided efforts, despite a huge per pupil expenditure of $17,000 (twice what Boston, just across the Charles River, spends), and despite the second-lowest student-teacher ratio - 12.5 - in the country, blacks in Cambridge lag not just behind whites and Asians but behind the state average for all blacks as well. Many

No Comparison

Pick a topic:race,civil rights or education.No Excuses is the definitive work of the last 30 years on each.Rigorously researched and beautifully written,the Thernstroms provide the most cogent analysis of one of the most difficult problems facing our society-- the prodigious gap in academic achievment between white and Asian students on the one hand and black and Hispanic students on the other.The book examines the various factors that cause some schools and students to succeed while others fail, with actual examples of schools that graduate students who are not just competent, but more often than not, academic superstars, despite disadvantages that conventional wisdom would suggest should doom them to failure.This is a magnificent work that is both scholarly and inspiring: an encyclopedic analysis that somehow manages to read like an adventure novel.It's a searingly intelligent examination of race, culture, family, finances,teachers,administrators,testing, instructional methods and a host of other factors that affect the achievment gap.No Excuses should be mandatory reading for teachers, parents, students and politicians.This is a profound problem but it can be fixed.

The Seminal Work on the Achievement Gap

The achievement gap is arguably the single biggest issue facing the public school system in America today. Failure to eliminate it calls into question the magnificent promise of public schools: that every child, regardless of birthright, will become productive citizens if given a free public education."No Excuses" is vital to understanding not just why the current public school system is unable to properly educate black and Hispanic children, but also how some people have succeeded in doing so.The Thernstroms meticulously document the state of non-Asian minority achievement in American schools, and show that the conventional solutions to the problem will fail, as they have in the past. The book explains why the current structure of the public school system - dominated by competing interest groups - can not and will not do what is necessary to educate black and Hispanic children. Their message is not without hope, however. The Thernstroms chronicle the very real successes of some inner-city schools, and analyze the reasons that they have been able to educate the kids the other schools could not.If you want to understand this issue you must read "No Excuses." The book's message won't be popular with defenders of the status-quo, but as the Thernstroms show, the status quo is the problem. Only when Americans turn a deaf ear to their perpetual caterwauling will the public school system live up to its glorious promise.