If you want to learn more:
Black American Students in an affluent Suburb: a study of academic disengagement
Author: John U. Ogbu
African Americans--Education--Social aspects. Academic achievement--United States. Educational equalization--United States. Based on recent study of Shaker Hts., Ohio Published in 2002
Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation
Author: Kozol, Jonathan
The children in this book defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. The book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDs, life-consuming fires and gang rivalries take a high toll. Several children die during the year in which this narrative takes place. A gently written work, "Amazing Grace" asks questions that are at once political and theological. What is the value of a child's life? What exactly do we plan to do with those whom we appear to have defined as economically and humanly superfluous? How cold -- how cruel, how tough -- do we dare be?
Paperback, 284 pages, Pub. Oct 1996 by Harper Perennial
The Black-White Test Score Gap
Editors: Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips
Amazon.com Ever since affirmative action was adopted as a wide-ranging policy in education and employment, controversy has surrounded it. Opinions have flown thick and fast, but there has been little hard evidence to support either side. The prosaically named Black-White Test Score Gap, a collection of essays on the subject, attempts to rectify this situation. As one authority after another weighs in, it becomes increasingly clear that the causes of African Americans' inferior scores on standardized tests have less to do with nature and everything to do with nurture (or lack of it). Not surprisingly, conditions such as poverty and lack of opportunity at the beginning of a child's life seems to have terribly detrimental effects on test scores and thus the chance to go to school or find a well-paying job later on. Editors Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips have done a good job of selecting both the topics and the contributors for this often contentious, always fascinating study of affirmative action.
Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First One Hundred Years
Author: Delany, Sarah Louise & A. Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth
Warm, feisty, and intelligent, the Delany sisters speak their mind in a book that is at once a vital historical record and a moving portrait of two remarkable women who continued to love, laugh, and embrace life after over 100 years of living side by side. Their sharp memories show readers the post-Reconstruction South and Booker T, Washington; Harlem's Golden Age and Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, and Paul Robeson. Bessie breaks barriers to become a dentist; Sadie quietly integrates the New York City system as a school teacher.
Paperback, 288 pages Pub. Feb 1997 by Delta Trade Paperbacks
Welcome to Heights High : The Crippling Politics of Restructuring America's Public Schools Author: Diana Tittle
"This disturbing and engrossing description of the politics of education in an Ohio suburb reminds us how often the power struggles of adults undermine the education of children. And what is worse, Americans have come to accept these counterproductive political arrangements as business-as-usual." Diane Ravitch, former Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education
Ohio State University Press 1995 345 pp. CIP. LC 95-21275
Videotapes produced in the PS21 series, available at the libraries or at Reaching Heights (932-5110)
Harold Hodgekinson - "Who will be the students of the 21st century and why they must succeed"
Alan November - "Technology, Education, and the Future"
Linda Darling-Hammond - "Redesigning Schools: a focus on students and teacher learning"
Hedrick Smith - "Rethinking America: How innovators in schools and businesses are responding to a global economy"
Congressman Major Owens - "Comments on Education"
(also available at the library - a videotape entitled "Color Blind" which makes the impact of discrimination palpable)