I read this book around two years ago. I found it insightful and persuasive then, and I have several times referenced the book when talking with others (and thinking to myself).
By way of background, I currently work as a special educator in a middle class high school that is 98% black. While I am not a fan of relying on anecdotal evidence, many of the statistics and arguments in this book encapulate well the things I see every day. A main piece of the authors' thesis is that, according to surveys, black students spend less time on homework, more time watching television, and experience less parental accountability than do their white and asian counterparts. Well, I see this every day; this book just confirms that this experience is not limited to my high school, but is happening on a national scale.
The purpose of this book is not to play the blame game, and not to spout off any political viewpoint. Rather, the book takes a very detached tone, and nothing said is said without the backing of statistics. AS others point out, the book is laden with graphs and charts demonstrating the distressing phenomenon of our widened racial gap in educational achievement (and educational effort).
Also, the authors are not "doom and gloom." Much of the book profiles minority schools that ARE achieving, and often achieving higher than their "white" counterparts. Most of those schools are private or charter schools (like the KIPP schools).
The authors' conclusions are ones that several people do not want to hear, but need to hear. The solution to all of this is to, quite simply, become aware of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that we put on kids - particularly minority kids - and be conscious to hold all students to the same standards. If the black population wants to experience the same deserts as the white population, then the only way is to do the things they are doing; equal results only comes from equal output and effort.
As to the reviewers below that paint this book is over-generalization and stereotype, I mentioned before that nothing said in thes pages is said without the backing of statistics. Some of the authors' statements allign with existing stereotypes, but never unjustly so and every conclulsion in the book can be justified statistically.
In conclusion, this book speaks candidly about a real problem - a problem that I, a special educator at a black high school, see every day. The only way we can close the racial gap is to set, and keep, standards. Kozol may be right that equal money can help achieve equal results (and this really is statistically debatable) but the Thernstroms are equally right to suggest that equal effort is the other half - so far, the missing half - of the equation.
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