The Black-White Achievement Gap

Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

Rod Paige, Former Secretary of Education
Elaine Witty, Former University Dean of Education

It's time to address one of the most important civil rights issues of our time.

When it comes to race in America, we must face one uncomfortable but undeniable fact. Almost 50 years after the birth of the civil rights movement, inequality still reigns supreme in our classrooms. At a time when African-American students trail their white peers on academic tests and experience high dropout rates, low college completion rates, and a tendency to shy away from majors in hard sciences and mathematics, the Black-White achievement gap in our schools has become the major barrier to racial equality and social justice in America. In fact, it is arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.

Providing a wealth of level-headed insights on the phenomena levied as responsible for the achievement gap… The Black–White Achievement Gap does not enter into the fray of this contentious debate. Instead, it sounds a clarion call to today’s leaders of all races to put the nation’s children before party politics and confront head-on this towering obstacle to social justice, rightly considered, in light of the devastating consequences of academic underachievement, ‘the greatest civil rights issue of our time.’

ForeWord Reviews

The Black-White Achievement Gap is a call to action for this country to face up to and confront this crisis head on. Renowned former Secretary of Education, Rod Paige believes we can close this gap. In this thought-provoking book, he and Elaine Witty trace the history of the
achievement gap, discuss its relevance to racial equality and social justice, examine popular explanations, and offer suggestions for the type of committed leadership and community-involvement needed to close it. African-American leaders need to rally around this important cause if we are to make real progress since students’ academic performance is a function not only of school quality, but of home and community factors as well. The Black-White Achievement Gap is an unflinching and long overdue look at the very real problem of racial disparity in our
schools and what we must do to solve it.

Rod Paige, PED (Houston, TX) was the U.S. Secretary of Education from 2001-2005. He served as the Superintendent of Houston Schools for 8 years and was Dean of the College of Education at Texas Southern for 10 years. Elaine Witty, Ed.D. (Columbia, SC) served 18 years as Dean of Education at Norfolk State University and is a noted educator.

The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

Hardcover - 240 pages

ISBN: 0814415199

$22.00