Multiplication Is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children

and a host of other attempts to reform our nations public education system.

Two things we have not seen are an elimination of the achievement gap between

white and African American children—or a new book by Lisa Delpit.

Sure to be an instant classic, "Multiplication Is for White People" explores a wide range of little-known research that conclusively demonstrates there is no achievement gap at birth and argues that poor teaching, negative stereotypes about African American intellectual inferiority, and a curriculum that still does not adequately connect to poor childrens lives all conspire against the education prospects of poor children of color. In a major new book for her many impatient fans and admirers, Delpit brings the topic of educating other peoples children into the twenty-first century.

Delpit's bestselling and paradigm-shifting first book, Other People's Children, focused on cultural slippage in the classroom between white teachers and students of color. Now, in "Multiplication is for White People", Delpit reflects on two decades of reform efforts—including No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, the creation of alternative teacher certification paths, and the charter school movement—that have still left a generation of poor children of color feeling that higher educational achievement isn't for them.

In chapters covering primary, middle, and high school, as well as college, Delpit concludes that it's not that difficult to explain the persistence of the achievement gap. In her wonderful trademark style, punctuated with telling classroom anecdotes and informed by time spent at dozens of schools across the country, Delpit outlines an inspiring and uplifting blueprint for raising expectations for other people's children, based on the simple premise that multiplication—and every aspect of advanced education—is for everyone.