Multiplication Is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children

From the MacArthur Award-winning education reformer and author of the bestselling Other People's Children, a long-awaited new book on how to fix the persistent black/white achievement gap in America's public schools

As MacArthur Award-winning educator Lisa Delpit reminds us--and as all research shows--there is no achievement gap at birth. In her long-awaited second book, Delpit presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education that conspire against the prospects for poor children of color, creating a persistent gap in achievement during the school years that has eluded several decades of reform.

Delpit's bestselling and paradigm-shifting first book, Other People's Children, focused on cultural slippage in the classroom between white teachers and students of color. Now, in "Multiplication Is for White People", Delpit reflects on two decades of reform efforts--including No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, the creation of alternative teacher certification paths, and the charter school movement--that have still left a generation of poor children of color feeling that higher educational achievement isn't for them.

In chapters covering primary, middle, and high school, as well as college, Delpit concludes that it's not that difficult to explain the persistence of the achievement gap. In her wonderful trademark style, punctuated with telling classroom anecdotes and informed by time spent at dozens of schools across the country, Delpit outlines an inspiring and uplifting blueprint for raising expectations for other people's children, based on the simple premise that multiplication--and every aspect of advanced education--is for everyone.

Author: Lisa Delpit
Publisher: New Press
Published: 03/05/2013
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781595588982

About the Author
MacArthur Award-winning education reformer and scholar Lisa Delpit is the author of "Other People's Children" and the co-editor of "The Real Ebonics Debate," "Quality Education as a Constitution Right," and "The Skin That We Speak." She is Felton G. Clark Professor of Education at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she lives.