The Great Divide
Racial achievement gap gains recognition as national concern, but solution continues to elude educators, scholars and policymakers.

By Ronald Roach

Americans know that Black and Latino children, by and large, are not reaching their full potential when it comes to learning and academic performance. But there are exceptions. The question that's being increasingly asked is how and why exceptions can become the norm.
"I can remember my parents making sure my sister and I learned to read before starting school, and my dad, who is an accountant, having us do math problems on Saturdays to master arithmetic," says Kenneth Gibbs Jr., a junior at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
Gibbs describes his parents as people who "left nothing to chance" when it came to guiding his education as a youngster. Hailing from a middle-class African American family in Durham, N.C., Gibbs enjoys the distinction of being a Meyerhoff scholar at UMBC with a 4.0 grade point average as a biochemistry and molecular biology major.
Gibbs also recalls that his parents had him apply to the highly regarded Durham-based North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, where he finished his last two years of high school, as well as to the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, where he now excels in the nationally prestigious Meyerhoff scholarship program.
He adds that his desire to tackle difficult subjects has found considerable support from and nurturing by dedicated teachers and professors. At UMBC, he has been able to meet senior professors and researchers from several of the universities to which he plans to apply for a Ph.D. program in biochemistry. "The program helps you to get connected in the science research community," he says.
The mix of sophisticated parenting, a stimulating home environment and high-quality schooling clearly represents the foundation of Gibbs' current success. Yet for African American and Latino students in general, having the optimal circumstances for academic success has long proven an elusive attainment for innumerable individuals.
In the half century since the Brown v. Board decision, there remains a wide chasm between the academic achievement of Black and Latino children and that of White and Asian American children. Stark facts, drawn from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test data and cited prominently in Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's recent book, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, reveal that the average Black 12th-grade student's proficiency in basic skills is roughly the same as the average White eighth grader.
"Hispanics do only a little better than African Americans. In reading and U.S. history, their NAEP scores in their senior year of high school are a few points above those of Whites in eighth grade. In math and geography, they are a few points lower," according to the Thernstroms, a husband-historian and wife-political scientist team who have written extensively about race in America. 
The coming demographic shift that's expected to make the United States a non-White majority nation around the year 2050 is driving a consensus among policy-makers, scholars and educators to shape school reform in ways to close the racial achievement gap. Observers say the long-term prospects for a healthy national economy and social stability depend on boosting the achievement levels of all students.
"It is in everybody's interests to raise (the) academic achievement of Black and Brown kids," says Dr. Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard University Kennedy School economist who has studied the achievement gap.
"Closing the achievement gap, many of us believe, is America's new civil right," Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, and the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, declared at a congressional briefing this past November.
With the Brown anniversary following in the wake of last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the use of race-conscious affirmative action in higher education, scholars and officials seem to be discussing student achievement as never before. Books by the Thernstroms, the late anthropologist Dr. John Ogbu and Dr. John McWhorter have fueled a sometimes highly charged national discussion on the racial learning gap. 
And though the gap gets considerable attention these days, no clear cut, comprehensive road map to the closure of it in K-12 education has yet to emerge. Where we've "made less progress is in figuring out what to do," says veteran psychologist Dr. Edmund W. Gordon, who is the director of the Institute of Urban and Minority Education (IUME) at Teachers College, Columbia University.
"There's no one silver bullet. Schools have to improve the quality of teaching. Supplementary education can come with extra instruction, such as in after school programs, and there's a lot more that parents can do," offers Dr. Pedro Noguera, an urban schools expert and an education professor at the New York University Steinhardt School of Education.
"I think we have a conceptualization of some of the elements of what good schools are that need to be achieved. What we don't have is a map of how we get there from where we are. The good news is that there seems to be a steady concern about the issue. It's been steady enough to keep it on the political agenda of the nation," says Dr. Michael Nettles, executive director of Educational Testing Service's (ETS) Education Policy and Research Center.