"No Textbook Answer: Communities Confront The Achievement Gap" tells the story of seven communities around the country that realized that their minority and low-income children were falling significantly behind their white and affluent counterparts in school. So each community came together to talk about the "Achievement Gap" as they saw it.
From those conversations, community members began to think about what they could do on their own, as a community, without waiting for a state or federal agency to provide funding to close the gap.
The film captures the amazing results that sprang from those conversations with vivid images and community members' own words. Where other recent documentaries on education reform have encouraged the public to demand change, "No Textbook Answer" tells the story of communities that decided to be the change they'd been waiting for.
"No Textbook Answer: Communities Confront The Achievement Gap" on Facebook.
"No Textbook Answer: Communities Confront The Achievement Gap" tells the story of seven communities around the country that realized that their minority and low-income children were falling significantly behind their white and affluent counterparts in school. So each community came together to talk about the "Achievement Gap" as they saw it.
Dr. Edmund Gordon has done seminal work analyzing “defiers”— people who come from socioeconomic groups that, statistically, aren’t likely to achieve much in school or in life, who somehow manage to succeed anyway, “defying” circumstances, disadvantages, and society’s expectations. Dr. Gordon identifies the characteristics he’s found in “defiers” that help them beat the odds.
When Minneapolis school officials wanted to change school districting in a way students felt would isolate minorities and decrease the diversity in their school, these students started their own organization to get other students informed and engaged on issues related to the Achievement Gap.
