Race-based programs and good schooling

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ou can' t judge a book by its cover -or a report by its authors. In 1997 the College Board organized a "National Task Force on Minority High Achievement" w h o s e m e m b e r s inc luded Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and EdmundW. Gordon, clliefly responsible for the dreadful New York State 1991 curriculum guide, One Nation, Many Peoples: A Declaration of Cultural Interdependence, which provoked a ringing dissent from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.The group contained no dissenting voices from civil rights orthodoxy, and the College Board, itself, tends to stick to very safe ground. And yet Reaching the Top, the report released this past October, is astonishingly good. A work of perfection? Of course not. But it is unexpectedly honest and courageous. Education may be the issue that finally forces the old guard to acknowledge some unwelcome data and embrace traditionally uncomfortable thoughts. Reaching the Top opens with a hitherto largely hush-hush point: by every measure non-Asian minority students--low-income and high-income--are doing very badly in school, whe ther one looks at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, SAT scores, grades, or class rank, the picture remains the same.As the report states, "relatively small percentages of Black, Hispanic, and NativeAmerican high school seniors.., have had scores typical of students who are generally well prepared for collegeTAnd in case the reader doubts the timdamental point, the authors provide ample data to indicate the appalling width of the racial gap in academic performance. Do not focus on the proportion of students who have finished high school or attend college, the report argues. Look at what they know not the number of years spent in school. In itself, that is an elementary but important distinction that too many writers on racial equality fail to make. Skills are the important question, and eliminating the racial gap in levels of academic achievement is the nation's "most important educational challenge," the Task Force states. Eliminating that gap is important for two reasons. Standardized tests and class rank in both high school and college are significantly related to earnings. Of course other factors come into play: "motivation, perseverance, creativity, an ability to work well with others, connections, plain old luck .... "White raci s m a m a z i n g l y i s not on the list. Evidently, as many data indicate, white"privilege" and racial hostility play no significant role in determining wage differentials between racial and ethnic groups. Average earnings between blacks and Asians, for example, will be significantly different as long as the typicalAsian student scores higher on the SATs. In addition, a concerted effort to close the gap in academic achievement is a moral obligation, theTask Force argues."When a great many individuals--and entire groups of peop le -do not have a genuine chance to develop their academic talents fully, our society is much poorer for their lack of educational opportunities," the report states. :'This is fundamentally unjust .... "If the description were accurate, the conclusion would be inescapable. But the argument that"entire groups" are deprived of educational opportunity is ludicrously overblown.As theTask Force admits, many black and Hispanic students go to resource-abundant suburban and other schools, and yet the racial gap in academic achievement is actually widest among middle-class students from educated families.The scores of black and white youngsters whose parents lack even a high-school degree are more alike. Equally important, even in those schools that are educationally wanting, many stu-