Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0470384441 ISBN 13: 9780470384442

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2008

Synopsis

In this groundbreaking book, co-editors Pedro Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing, and their collaborators investigated the dynamics of race and achievement at Berkeley High School–a large public high school that the New York Times called "the most integrated high school in America." Berkeley's diverse student population clearly illustrates the "achievement gap" phenomenon in our schools. Unfinished Business brings to light the hidden inequities of schools–where cultural attitudes, academic tracking, curricular access, and after-school activities serve as sorting mechanisms that set students on paths of success or failure.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Fulfilling the promise of public education is the reason that so many schools and districts are now working desperately to find ways to close the achievement gap. The persistence of wide disparities in achievement that correspond with the race and class backgrounds of students serves as a reminder that America remains a deeply divided nation, a place where the lines separating the haves and the have-nots are manifest in every facet of our lives."
—from the Preface

In this groundbreaking book, co-editors Pedro Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing and their collaborators investigated the dynamics of race and achievement at Berkeley High School—a large public high school that the New York Times called "the most integrated high school in America." Berkeley's diverse student population clearly illustrates the "achievement gap" phenomenon in our schools. Unfinished Business brings to light the hidden inequities of schools—where cultural attitudes, academic tracking, curricular access, and after-school activities serve as sorting mechanisms that set students on paths of success or failure.

Unfinished Business examines the results of the Berkeley High School Diversity Project, a six year research and organizing project that brought together high school students, parents, teachers, staff, and university researchers to explore how a school and a community can act together to address the racial disparities that exist in academic performance. The book explores what factors contribute to the disparity in academic achievement between students of different racial and class backgrounds, and identifies the factors that are responsible for the racial separation of students within the school.

Unfinished Business analyzes the successes and failures the project members encountered during their work and describes the revelations and insights they gained during the project. While the task of closing the achievement gap is daunting, Unfinished Business explains the concrete steps that parents, educators, and the larger community can take to help close the education gap in their community.

From the Back Cover:

Fresh Insight on Racial Dynamics and Academic Achievement in Schools

"Unfinished Business illuminates the challenges in overcoming the current inequities in public education. Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, this book exposes a 'tale of two schools' where students walk through the same high school doors but remain racially and academically segregated within—a condition mirrored in urban schools and districts across the nation. The authors offer a hopeful, yet urgent, call to invest in youth on the front side of life and to hold fast to the vision of a future where all children can truly learn, achieve, and dream to their highest potential."
—Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., president and founder,Rainbow/PUSH Coalition

"It should concern us deeply as scholars, policymakers, and practitioners that at one of our nation's best schools—one that is deemed as 'working' and highly successful according to official accounts—children's destinies are no less circumscribed by race and class. This book contains a clear wake-up call in its masterful account of deep and abiding commitments to educational equity."
—Angela Valenzuela, Haskew Centennial Professor, Department of Curriculum & Instruction and Center for Mexican American Studies,University of Texas at Austin

"It's a powerful experience to immerse oneself in this book. The many voices of teachers—and even of kids and families—reveal that many inequities remain hidden in our schools. Unfinished Business shows that there's work to be done, and provokes us into thinking more deeply about answers."
—Deborah Meier, senior scholar, New York University, and founding principal of Central Park East schools in Harlem and Mission Hill in Roxbury

About this edition

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0470384441
• ISBN 13: 9780470384442
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Noguera Pedro A., Wing Jean Yonemura
• Illustrator: Miriam Klein Stahl