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No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning | 
 enlarge | Authors: Abigail Thernstrom, Stephan Thernstrom
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 274993
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 074326522X
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.82900973
EAN: 9780743265225
ASIN: 074326522X
Publication Date: September 14, 2004
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Condition: Softcover. Some page corners are folded. Slight cover wear. Pages appear unmarked. Ships the next business day, with tracking and delivery confirmation sent to your email.
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Product Description
The racial gap in academic performance between whites and Asians, on the one hand, and Latinos and blacks, on the other hand, is America's most urgent educational problem. It is also the central civil rights issue of our time, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom. Unequal skills and knowledge are the main sources of ongoing racial inequality, and racial inequality is America's great unfinished business.A wide and tragic gap in learning is evident in affluent suburbs as well as inner cities. But great schools are scattered across the country, as described in inspiring detail by the Thernstroms. These schools are putting even the most highly disadvantaged children on the American ladder of economic opportunity. There are no good excuses for the perpetuation of long-standing inequalities, the Thernstroms argue eloquently. The problem can be solved, but conventional strategies will not work. Fundamental educational reform is needed. Carefully researched, accessibly written, and powerfully persuasive, this book offers both a close analysis of the current landscape and a blueprint for essential and overdue change.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Facts, Not Political Correctness or Wishful Thinking! May 2, 2008
"No Excuses" opens with a harsh dose of reality. By the 12th grade, on average, black students are four years behind whites and Asians. This gap exists both in urban and suburban school, though is somewhat smaller in the former. Hispanics don't do much better. The gap begins at kindergarten, and grows each year. Students hit the hardest by disorder in the schools are those with the greatest educational needs.
"No Excuses" (the slogan, not the book) is the message that superb schools (and parents) deliver to their youngsters. Nowhere is this made more clear than in our Asian pupil population, placing a much higher priority on education in surveys. Roughly 4% of Americans are of Asian background, while making up 27% of MIT's 2000 freshman class, 25% at Stanford, 24% at Cal Tech, 17% at Harvard, etc. They are also more likely to graduate than white - 54% of Asian-Americans 25-29 had a B.A. or more in 2000, vs. 34% of whites.
Hispanics have less commitment to the U.S. In 1997, 53% of European-born immigrants had become citizens, 44% of Asians, and 15% of Mexicans. The bulk of the Hispanic high-school dropout rate statistic is associated with Mexican immigrants who never attended U.S. schools, according to the authors; I'm highly doubtful. Over one-third second-generation Mexican-American students have not mastered English.
Increasing per-pupil funding has not proven effective - it doubled from 1970-2000; only about one-fifth of that increase was due to Special Education increases. In addition, pupil spending is more closely related to socio-economic status than race.
The authors reference both the Coleman Report and the K.C. integration "experiment" of 1985-2000, but do so far too briefly. The former is the largest careful analysis of pupil performance ever conducted in the U.S. - it found little/no relationship between typical school expenditures such as reduced class size, increased teacher experience (beyond the first two years), increased teacher education, etc. and pupil achievement. Only teacher vocabulary and parental factors were statistically and operationally significant. The K.C. schools reduced average class size to 13 as part of a $2 billion increase in spending. Pupil performance did not improve, and in 2001 the district lost its accreditation.
Texas' efforts were offered as a positive sign. Unfortunately, later assessments revealed that most/all the improvement in dropout rates and pupil achievement was due to data and test-taking manipulations.
Barriers to significant improvement include limitations on the superintendent's authority, weak colleges of education, a dysfunctional pay and seniority system for teachers, potential civil rights protests, tenure, teacher unions and their ability to influence school-board elections, and politically-manipulated criterion-referenced tests used to assess progress. (The latter was not mentioned in "No Excuses."
Urban Education Synergies September 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book's authors explore the effects of public schools, charter schools, poverty, and ethnic culture on school achievement. They push a theory, based on considerable data, that the African American achievement gap is more a result of cultural influences than poverty or poor schools. While this might be seen as "blaming the victim", the evidence sited is compelling as are the examples of schools that appear to be dealing with these cultural influences more effectively than others. I consider it a must read for anyone attempting to solve the achievement gap problem facing African Americans.
 Useful facts, right attitude, analysis not very sharp May 9, 2007
There is a fair amount of good stuff in this book. It focuses alot on race and ethnicity, and that discussion is very helpful. For example, in the chapter on Hispanics, the authors give a very useful summary of the economic position of Hispanics. (No, they are not all poor. They look poor, because we are constantly flooded with new poor Mexicans, but, after Hispanics are in the US for a few generations, they do fine.)
The authors also have the right attitude toward school. They believe that everyone can be taught. They believe that all schools can be good schools. They do not buy the usual blarney about how come we can not educate poor kids until after the Revolution.
That said, however, the book falls down hard on its actual analysis of WHY so many schools stink and exactly what we can do about it. They tell some stories about very good schools in very bad areas. What these stories basically tell us is that there are a few, highly charismatic, teachers and educational leaders out there, who have gotten fabulous results in unpromising places. These stories are not very helpful, however, because we can not fix the whole system, by trying to find no teachers who are not inspiring and charismatic. If the system needs extraordinary people to produce acceptable results, then we are not going to solve this problem.
The authors do also advocate standards-based testing, which has become relatively conventional conservative advice for school reform. I think they are correct, as far as it goes, but this is not enough to fix the system.
 Blatant Stereotyping and Over-Generalization October 27, 2006
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
The best part of reading this book was finishing it, and turning directly to Jonathan Kozol's "Shame of the Nation". The Thernstroms bombard readers with "facts", graphs, charts, and a whole lot of stereotypes and dangerous assumption. For starters, they must have a different place in mind when they describe the "affluent town" of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Clearly they've never stepped outside the Ivy walls of Harvard Square. If they did, they would see first hand the gross injustice being done in the shadows of these walls...an urban public high school that is nowhere near the profile that they provide. They go on to describe, with great confidence, different groups as chapter titles as crass as "Asians" "Hispanics" and "Blacks". Don't bother with this...pick up anything by Kozol, Deborah Meier, Gary Orfield, Richard Elmore, or Richard Rothstein instead.
Controversial, yet very informative March 28, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The title of this book No Excuses sums up the content that is in the book. The Thernstroms explain the causes of the Achievement Gap, BUT takes it one step further saying that these are just the causes--NOT EXCUSES! Many people look at the achievement gap and label what the problems are but do not go any further. The Thernstroms provide examples of a few schools that are successfully tackling the achievement gap. However, these schools are not the typical public schools because they are funded by outside sources and they have the freedom to choose how funds will be spent without government involvement. This book has been very controversial, and there are parts of the book that requires an open mind free from other perspectives in order to fully understand where the authors are coming from. We found that we learned the most when we opened our mind this way, but still there were parts that we just do not agree with and probably never will. This is a great book that brings awareness to other perspectives for overcoming the achievement gap.
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