Money Not the Remedy for Closing Racial Achievement Gap, Researcher Says
by Jim Brown
November 17, 2003
(AgapePress) - A new book says the racial gap in academic achievement is an American catastrophe and there no good excuses.In their book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom address the achievement gap between Whites and Asians on one hand, and Blacks and Hispanics on the other. Mrs. Thernstrom says on average, non-Asian minorities are performing very poorly in K-12 years. She and her husband regard the situation as the nation's number-one civil-rights problem, an education crisis, and the ongoing source of racial inequality in America.
"Equal skills and equal knowledge mean equal earnings down the road. That wasn't true yesterday; it is true today," she says. "America has become a land of equal opportunity, but only for those with skills and knowledge. Black kids, on average, are graduating from high school with 7th- and 8th-grade skills, and the Latino kids are not doing much better."
The senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research says the academic achievement gap between the average Asian or White student and the typical Black or Hispanic youngster is not due to a shortage of money for public education. Pouring money into the existing public school establishment, she says, is no guarantee of quality education. She cites Washington, DC, as an example.
"The District of Columbia, the nation's capital, spends over $15,000 per pupil. That's a lot of money -- it's among the highest per pupil spending in the whole nation," Thernstrom says, "and, of course, the District schools are among the worst, if not the worst, in the entire country. Money doesn't equal quality."
Thernstrom and her husband recommend turning every urban school into a charter school that would be required to meet tough state standards.
