Book Review: Black American students in an affluent suburb: A study of academic disengagement

Abstract

The purpose of Ogbu's Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement is to report findings of a research project that investigated the achievement gap between African American and White students in the community of Shaker Heights, OH. The topic of the racial achievement gap is quite current and interesting to many school administrators, government agencies, and community leaders.Shaker Heights is a planned suburb of Cleveland that became a voluntarily self-integrated community in the 1960s. At the time of the study, about one third of the community was African American. The study was prompted by community reaction to a 1997 article published in the local high school newspaper, The Shakerite, which described an achievement gap between the school performance of Black students and White students. Ogbu was invited to investigate the performance gap and to suggest solutions to the community. The community and school district mutually agreed to support the study. After an initial meeting with community and school members, Ogbu decided to research reasons for low school performance of Black students and for their academic disengagement.The researchers used ethnography as the method for the study. They used four techniques for gathering data: group and individual discussions, individual interviews, formal document reviews, and participant observations. The research lasted more than 8 months and was conducted in two phases. The author used transcribed quotes from informants in much of the book to give voice to their concerns and opinions. While the anecdotal data provide a glimpse into the lives of the students, it would be more helpful to the reader to know which comments came from Blacks and which came from Whites. Because the researcher is comparing the two races, it is curious that, in many cases, the speakers are identified by role-student, parent, counselor-but not race.The book is divided into four parts. Part One includes three chapters that describe the problems and review the conventional explanations. Part Two includes five chapters in which the findings are presented. Part