ALEXANDRIA, Va. — There is no more pressing topic in education today than closing the achievement gap, and there is no one in America who knows more about the gap than Ronald Ferguson.
Closing the Achievement Gap Without Widening a Racial One - NY Times
- Published: 11 February 2011
Ronald Ferguson of Harvard explores the reasons black students’ grades lag behind those of whites.
Although he is a Harvard professor based in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Ferguson, 60, spends lots of time flying around the country visiting racially mixed public high schools. Part of what he does is academic, measuring the causes of the gap by annually surveying the performance, behaviors and attitudes of up to 100,000 students. And part is serving as a de facto educational social worker, meeting with students, faculty members and parents to explain what steps their schools can take to narrow the gap.
