Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Educating Latino, Black, and Asian Students

This book promotes an understanding of the challenges and strengths of minority children in U.S. schools. It also recommends effective practices, interventions, and policies to improve their achievement in school and their success in life. Coverage not only informs about the most identifiable minority groups, but also provides explicit recommendations for educators, policy makers, and practitioners. The central idea of the book is that educational, psychological, and social research, to put it simply, should be used. Conceptualizing opportunities and challenges in working with minority children in the context of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the book analyzes educational and social policy and provides recommendations for educators, psychologists, researchers, policymakers, and others.

Susan J. Paik is Associate Professor at the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Her research interests include urban and international studies, educational productivity, family-school partnerships, minority learning, research methods and evaluation. She has participated in education projects in Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and the U.S, where she founded and directed a character-development program for inner city children and youth. Dr. Paik has presented her work at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Oxford University in England, University of Cape Town in South Africa, University of Bologna in Italy, University of Oviedo in Spain as well as professional meetings in South America, Australia, Germany, and the U.S. She has been awarded Young Scholar by the Stanford University Hoover Institution Koret K-12 Task Force. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, grants, including the AERA-NSF-IES grant, NIMH fellowship for prevention, Center for Urban Educational Research and Development (CUERD) fellowship, Chancellor’s Service Award, Teaching Incentive Award, and Early Outreach Award for her dedication and service to inner city youth by the University of Illinois. Among many published articles, she is the author of a research monograph called Educational Productivity in South Korea and the United States published by the International Journal of Educational Research (IJER). She is the co-author of a booklet called Effective Educational Practices published by UNESCO and translated and disseminated to almost 150 countries. Dr. Paik is the editor of Advancing Educational Productivity: Policy Implications from National Databases. She has recently co-edited a special IJER journal issue on family-school partnerships.
Herbert J. Walberg was on the faculty of Harvard University and is now Emeritus University Scholar and Research Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr Walberg is also Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University and a Principal Investigator at the U.S Department of Education-sponsored Center for Educational Innovation and Improvement and the U.S. Institute of Education-sponsored National Research and Development Center on School Choice, Competition, and Achievement. An editor or author of more than 50 books, he has contributed more than 300 papers to peer-reviewed psychology and education journals, and he has written extensively for educators and policy makers. Dr. Walberg currently edits a series of booklets on effective education practices for the International Academy of Education that the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Educational Organization distributes in hard copy in more than 150 countries and on the Internet for down loading and re-publication. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Education, and the Royal Statistical Society. In 2004, the U.S. Senate confirmed his presidential appointment to the National Board for Education Sciences, which will provide guidance and oversight for federal research on education.