No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

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Summary: Realizing that being "minority" does not mean "less capable"
Review: In a period when the pressure is on America to avoid self-accountability, by stressing this very trait, No Excuses finally dares to put aside racism. As a college teacher, I've wondered why so many arguments are made for lowering standards to allow success for both African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. Both groups of students are quite capable of "making the grade." It seems that any argument against this book, maintaining that it is racist, is also arguing that these ethnic groups are indeed less intelligent.

Hopefully, this will be, if not the first, an important realization that educators should not expect less of African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans, but more, and that the level of American education should rise to new "standards" instead of dropping them.

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Summary: If You Care About Our Kids, then READ THIS BOOK!
Review: 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 conventional wisdom regarding the racial gap in learning; namely, that underperforming schools just need more money and smaller class sizes, should be more "racially balanced," and should hire more minority teachers. The authors show that these excuses do not explain the racial academic achievement gap, and pandering to them will neither improve public schools nor solve the problem of underachieving black and Hispanic students.

The authors also outline how Title I and Head Start have been a dismal failure since their inception. As education secretary Rod Paige aptly put it, "After spending $125 billion of Title I money over 25 years, we have virtually nothing to show for it." Also looked at is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) signed by President Bush in 2001. The final chapter of the book analyzes the many bureaucratic obstacles that prevent true educational reform, not the least of which is how good teachers are (not) rewarded, the inability of superintendents to bring about change, and, of course, the teachers' unions.

For far too long, black and Hispanic academic underachievement has been a taboo subject, shamefully ignored by civil rights leaders, the media, and even academia. "No Excuses" forces us to not only examine this issue head on, but work to reverse this horrible trend before yet another generation of young blacks and Hispanics are crippled into a permanent underclass. The Thernstroms have shown that they care deeply about our children's future. For all others concerned, reading this book is a good first step in bringing about change.

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Summary: pretty good attempt at topic
Review: It seems like the Thernstrom's really put alot of effort into this book like they did with America in Black and White. What I really liked about the book was that it offered more then just information about educational problems but also offered solution such as changing the teacher's unions and with schools like Amistad and KIPP which have done great jobs of educating disadvantaged children. The Thernstrom's also put an emphasis on culture between blacks, Hispanics and Asian families to try to explain their academic differences though it is really too generalized of an approach to look at racial differences since there is a large varaition within a single racial group (there are high performing Hispanic groups like Cubans and low performing Asian groups like Laotions and Cambodians). The Thernstroms also do a good job of attacking conventional ideas on improving education such as spending more mone, racial isolation and teacher quality and how these areas have not lived up to their promises.

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Summary: This is a fine book -- polemical but scholarly
Review: It's possible to praise a fine book for the wrong reasons. One of the reviewers here (who seems to believe that different "races" have inherently different levels of intelligence) may leave the impression that the Thernstrom's endorse his view -- or that their data supports it. Nothing could be further from the truth. They document that African-Americans score low on reading and math tests, and they emphasize that this cannot be explained away by alleged low per-pupil expenditures on inner-city schools. But they regard this as a national scandal precisely because they know and can demonstrate that it has nothing to do with inherent abilities and everything to do with social expectations. (Think of this book as a carefully documented version of what Bill Cosby told "black leaders" earlier this year. The authors are at pains to describe inner-city schools with low-income African-American populations, where levels of student achievement are outstanding. The authors can be labeled "conservative" in the sense that they believe African-Americans will benefit from school choice -- although "conservative" is an odd word to apply to the argument that we need radical change to a demonstrably failing system in order to give poor people a chance to succeed. (I write this as a veteran of civil rights marches and after 11 years on a local public school board. I can only imagine what a teachers' union would say if we tried to insist that they could use their health benefits only at clinics in their neighborhoods, especially if those clinics had decades of high mortality rates.) Anyway, this book is well worth reading, wherever you come out on the authors' very quietly stated policy recommendations.

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Summary: Breaking down the excuses for failure
Review: Lets get this strait once and for all. Failure is a choice. THis books message is that their is 'NO EXCUSE' for the total disaster that is the education system in America. The author focuses on race(something everyone seems to be into these days) as the barometer of the failure. The authors show how The major divides in education are between the Hispanic/Blacks and the Whites and the Asians. They show how in essential subjects like math asians are ashamed to leave school with an A- while Blacks are rarely ashamed to go home with a C-. THe authors further deminstrate that the situation is intolerable, that allowing children to graduate, regardless of race, without having amassed minimum basic skills, like gee being able to read, or add 6+5.

The problem with those that condemn this work is that they claim that the statistics used in this publication(standardized tests and such) are unfair because they dont test the 'individual'. The flaw here is that it doesnt matter how much 'individual' you want if the kid cant read and cant add then he will be a failure in life. It doesnt matter how much we want to pretend that 'all students are different and they learn diffeently' if the kids cant read, then they wont get anywhere. Who cares how different they are, or what CULTURE, they come from, the importance of simple skills can be taught to them. THe problam with those that oppose the views in this book is that they are justifying failure, they want education taught to the lowest common demoninator with no standardsw whatsoever. It is a psychology of failure that has taken hold of the education system.

People will say when reading this fine work 'well its unfair because these kids are poor they have a harder time learning'. Well thats odd because 90% of the richest people in America were born poor and somehow they got an education and worked hard. Their is simply no excuse for a kid that cant do simple alegebra by the 12th grade. The fact that teachers use race as an excuse to pass that kid from grade to grade is what leads to his abject failure in life and the perpetuating of the racial divide. The book argues that we must raise the standards for everyone and expect the whites and the Blacks and the Hispanics to achieve at an asian level, and if they dont want to then so be it but then dont blame their failure in life on 'discrimination', blame it on their inability and CHOICE not to learn. Its not cutlrue that makes a person stupid but it is the culture of failure and worshiping stupidity and laziness that encourages kids not to suceed.

This is a wonderful book that sets striat the truth behind americs totally useless education system. THis is the book that will explain to you why every liberal wants to plow more money into public education when their own kids go to private school. This is the book that will show how Washington D.C spends more per child in education then almost all the states and yet has the 49th WORST scores on all tests and in all subjects. Where did the money go? probably it went to teaching about culture and tolerance and diversity so that these kids will be masters of racial understanding but barely able to read. Have the kids been helped, well they are tolerant and thats good because when they are out working at the gas station they will have to tolerate lots of abuse from annoying customers.

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Summary: No Comparison
Review: 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 wh
ite 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.

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Summary: The Seminal Work on the Achievement Gap
Review: 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.

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Summary: Refuses to draw the most obvious conclusions
Review: The eternal puritan thus speaks through this book:we should be angry at nature for endowing a branch of the family tree with less innate intelligence than others.What we should be infuriated with is the gap between the slogans used by people like the authors and the actual truth on these matters.There exists an unbridgeable gulf between integrationist fantasy and reality.That's nature.Deal with it!How long must we put up with this criminal farce of taxing the public to death and bludgeoning the productive people of this country with govt. power to force them to integrate with those we know are fundamentally incompatible with a prosperous,civilized order?You want a clue?Take a good look at the horrors now engulfing Zimbabwe and South Africa.That is where delusions of equality necessarily lead.It is amazing the Thernstrom's in 350 pages never even accidentally stumbled anywhere near the fundamental,ugly truth that this society refuses to face.Is that willful self-deception or simple deception of the public?I think i know the answer to that one...
In 50 or so years,after our New Soviet P.C. society follows the ordained path of all societies built on fatuousness,liberal fantasies,deliberate hiding and outlawing of truth,books like this will be looked back upon with the same bewilderment,scorn and a feeling of queesiness-as though having stepped in something foul-that we now look back upon the demented writings of the Communist-Marxists.

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Summary: re: reader from florida
Review: The reader from Florida exemplifies why schools are failing black students. He/she is a teacher who does not believe in minority students' abilities. Evidently, this is not a wise teacher; this is one who has adopted the racist dogma of Murray, Levine and others. (Dogma that can not be scientifically proven. this teacher would be surprised to know that tests show that black babies & toddlers are more advanced than white babies and toddlers.) This person should not be allowed to teach in schools where he does not believe in the students' abilities.
Black students quickly sense and tune-in to racism--they know when someone is being condescending or does not respect

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Summary: Ignores the underlying problem but offers good advice
Review: The Thernstroms address the widespread academic failure of African-American and Latino students and do so by totally skipping around the question of I.Q. and innate ability. That is their failure. Every study shows that intelligence is unevenly distributed among ethnic groups (see Phillippe-Rushton, Murray and Hernstein, etc.). Rather than offer an argument why they disagree with the evidence (there is none), they just dismiss reality - and science- with a wave of their politically correct hands. They announce that they won't even entertain the idea that mental ability is not equal - without giving a rational reason why they can support this move and still consider themselves intelligent people rather than devotees of a baseless ideology.

Having eliminated the most important reason for academic failure, they don't have much left to do but what they do, they do well. They demolish arguments that students would do better if they had more minority teachers, more programs financed by the govt. (Head Start has drained billions from taxpayers and accomplished nothing for that money), more integration. They destroy arguments that gifted programs should be eliminated so that poor performing students can be in classrooms with the brightest (while slowing down the progress of the gifted with classrooms weighed down by dumb students). What they conclude is that African-American students watch an incredible amount of T.V. (much more T.V. than white or Asian students) and that these same students - here it comes- simply do not work as hard as white or Asian students. They advise schools to stop making excuses for laziness, sociopathic misbehavior, and the lack of academic ambition. They advise African-American families to stop making excuses for their children underperforming, misbehaving, and for disrupting classrooms. They advise the teacher unions to get out of the way of progress.

All of this is good advice and I am all for it. The question remains: are these students underperforming and misbehaving because of an African-American family culture that doesn't demand (as Asian families do) high achievement or is the underperforming due to lack of ability (I.Q.)? I believe it is the latter - but I am willing to go along with the authors and let them (or anyone else) try to prove me wrong. How you change an entire subculture to value educational achievement and basic good behavior is a mystery.

I work in a largely minority high school where most students graduate with the equivalent of an 6th grade education. We have great teachers but the students refuse to do homework, study, or even do any leisure time reading (that would interfere with T.V.) and if we failed every student that deserved it we would have a race war here. Parents are only interested in the school when they smell the possibility of a lawsuit. The result of this automatic promotion of functionally illiterate people is that local businesses no longer value a diploma from our school. We lowered the bar so much that we are graduating students who can't count change so they can't even work in the fast food industry. They can barely read (at age 18) so they need to have their driver's license exam read to them by county workers.

Out of 80 IEP meetings last year, I had only two parents show up - dismal evidence of parental indifference toward education (and we are willing to schedule IEP meetings at almost any time so work conflicts are not the reason (actually, most of the parents don't work - as proven by phone calls home during the day).
This book gives as much truth as the liberal educators can deal with. Maybe one day we will deal with the rest of the truth - how intelligence is unevenly distributed across groups and nations. Until then, the comedy goes on.