Description
Book SynopsisKids Don't Want to Fail uses empirical evidence to refute the widely accepted hypothesis that the black-white achievement gap in secondary schools is due to a cultural resistance to schooling in the black community. The author finds that inadequate elementary school preparationnot negative attitudeaccounts for black students' underperformance.
Trade ReviewKids Don't Want to Fail is quite remarkable in its detail, care, and depth as a critical empirical examination of the oppositionality hypothesis: the widely held belief that black student underachievement is attributable to a cultural resistance to schooling. Harris writes so clearly and in a style free of jargon that the quantitative emphasis of his study should not prove a barrier to non-specialist readers. -- William Darity, Jr., Duke University
Kids Don't Want to Fail powerfully critiques a position held by many social scientists and teachers that African American students take an oppositional approach to education. This book offers an important—indeed, an indispensable—corrective by systematically decomposing the key assumptions of this position and then masterfully showing that these assumptions cannot be substantiated with empirical evidence. -- Brian Powell, Indiana University
Sociologist Harris provides an important corrective to academic theories and popular thought that attribute racial differences in educational achievement to students' attitudes toward schooling. -- G. L. Ochoa * Choice *
