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It is essential to the future success of this country that we find ways to raise the achievement of minority children, Harvard University's Ronald Ferguson said in a keynote address at the 2005 WEAC Winter Conference.
Education, Ferguson said, "is our most important economic development policy." The economy depends on a skilled workforce, which depends on quality education for all, he said.
"If we care about having all kinds of people having middle-class lifestyles, then we must help them improve their skills," he said.
In a few decades, he said, non-whites collectively will make up the majority of the United States' population. If they are disproportionately shut out of the middle and upper classes, he said, that is "a recipe for social instability."
"We have enough time to get it right between now and then," he said.
Whoever is responsible for the achievement gap between minority and majority students, Ferguson said, teachers and education support professionals have "a central role" to play in helping to close it.
Parents, teachers and support staff must "begin to search more actively for ways to do things better," he said. "All of us know more collectively than each of us knows individually."
Ferguson said some educators have lower expectations for black students and students from different backgrounds, and that can hold those students back.
It is important, he said, that educators encourage and support all students.
"If we search harder for ways to unlock potential, we're probably going to find some that we didn't expect to find," he said. "We need to get to the point as a nation that we invest in the search to a degree that seems irrational."
He said three teacher behaviors and attitudes contribute to student success:
"It's not just about my expectations for my students, it's also about my expectations for myself as a teacher," he said.
Ferguson said we know as a nation that we can lower the achievement gap because we have done it before. From 1970 through most of the 1980s, he said, the achievement gap decreased, although progress ended in the late '80s.
"We clearly established the proposition that progress is possible," he said.
In the late 1980s, he said, a "shift in youth culture" occurred at the same time that hip-hop music increased in popularity. Also, he said, the amount of leisure reading by black children fell sharply. Ferguson said it could be a coincidence, but he believes hip-hop music has a big influence on young black people.
"For white kids, it's entertainment; for black kids, it's identity," he said.
You can't "put the genie back in the bottle," he said, but we can all try to talk more with kids about the influence of hip-hop in their lives and overcome negative messages with positive ones.
Offering genuine encouragement helps all children succeed, but research shows it is especially important for black students, he said.
"Some teachers communicate, 'I love to help you and I'm holding you to a high standard,' and others communicate just the opposite of that," Ferguson said.
Posted February 28, 2005