The race card: Where is it?

Peter Meyer / February 14, 2011

Though I have never been a big fan of our obsession with race and poverty as? useful?tools for improving academic achievement ? what starts as a sociological construct (thank you, James Coleman), quickly becomes a general principal, which, by the time you get to the classroom trenches has become a horribly self-fulfilling and deterministic pedagogy ? Michael Winerip's thoughtful profile of Ronald Ferguson in today's New York Times offers some hope that we can start focusing on what counts: what you know and when you know it.?

Ferguson, the deeply respected Harvard academic, begins to get at the root of the problem by finding, as Winerip explains it, that half of the achievement gap can be explained by the fact?that ?black parents on average are not as academically oriented in raising their children as whites.??

"On average"?? I'm no statistician, but my unscientific observations suggest that?researchers seem to turn a blind eye to apples and oranges when it comes to race. By citing the proverbial ?wealthy suburb? data ? ?40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites? writes Winerip ? to prove the achievement gap, our academics continue, in the process,?to reinforce the racial stereotype.?

But at least book ownership begins to get at the source of the problem: hey, 'bro, content counts.? I could walk you through plenty of? households in my town -- as racially and economically as mixed as America itself --

» Continued

The race card: Where is it?