Angel Harris on roots of the black-white achievement gap

Hour 2

ANGEL HARRIS challenges recent explanations for low academic performance of African American high school students in his new book, Kids Don’t Want to Fail: Oppositional Culture and the Black-White Achievement Gap. His research finds black kids perform poorly in high school because they don’t enter with the necessary skills, not the conventional theories that they don’t want to succeed. Harris, an assistant professor of Sociology and African American studies at Princeton University, examines the health and economic support that need to exist in preadolescence to better prepare students for their future school careers.

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[audio: 091911_110630.mp3]