A talk with Jawanza

Parents and teachers of black children who wish to confront the failures of the education system that have not been remedied by the No Child Left Behind Act will appreciate this dissection of the root issues affecting academic achievement. Postulating that teachers' expectations of black children are too low, the book argues the importance of nurturing needy students even under nondiscriminatory standardization policies that can help raise a school's overall level of excellence. It also addresses the problem of new teachers not being adequately educated to understand the wide variety of learning styles, therefore unintentionally eliminating the best methods to reach a child. Finally, by pinpointing the irrelevance of certain aspects of the curriculum to particular subsets of students, the book makes a powerful argument that black children could be better educated with a more directed approach.