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...superintendent of schools in Ann Arbor, Mich., George Fornero can tick off the kind of statistics that might cause ambitious parents to consider moving across the country to get their kids into his schools. The class of 2004 in the city's three main high schools racked up a combined average score of 1165 on the SAT, 139 points higher than the national average. Eighty-five percent of their seniors go on to four-year colleges. And last year they had 44 National Merit finalists. But there are other numbers of which Fornero is less proud. The district's African...
...harder to explain the gap in places like Ann Arbor, where so many students come from seemingly similar backgrounds. After studying the difficulties of black students in middle-class Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1997, John Ogbu, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, posited that academic achievement for those black students was hindered by cultural attitudesmost notably the fear of being labeled as "acting white" if they performed well or studied too much in school. His theories have helped inspire barbed public comments from such prominent African Americans as Bill Cosby, who bemoans negligent parenting, and Barack Obama, Illinois...
Enter Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor who canvassed junior high and high schoolers from Ann Arbor and 14 other integrated, middle- and upper-middle-class communities four years ago and developed a more nuanced explanation for the middle-class gap, as well as some specific prescriptions for bridging it. Looking at the affluent districts, Ferguson found that blacks and whites there weren't as homogeneous as they appeared at first glance. For starters, blacks were less affluent. Only 21% of blacks were upper middle class or higher, whereas 73% of whites were. Academically, there were...
Superintendents from the districts Ferguson studied, including Rossi Ray-Taylor, Fornero's predecessor in Ann Arbor, had created a network to share gap-closing ideas even before Ferguson began his research. His findings formed the basis for the efforts Ray-Taylor started in 2002, which Fornero expanded when he took over in January 2003. "Our goal is achievement and opportunity for all students--and I'm serious about it," Fornero says...
Boosting the number of minority students in Advanced Placement (AP) classes is a priority for Ann Arbor officials, but part of their challenge will be to make the students feel less alienated once they get into them. Sterling Cross, a junior at Pioneer High School, is often one of just two or three black students in AP classes because, he says, many of his black friends who are also qualified to take them are intimidated by both the rigor and the prospect of going it alone. They are worried that if they have trouble, they won't get any help...