As award-winning educator Lisa Delpit reminds us-and as all research shows-there is no achievement gap at birth.
In her long-awaited second book, Delpit presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education
that conspire against the prospects for poor children of color, creating a persistent gap in achievement during
the school years that has eluded several decades of reform.
Delpit's bestselling and paradigm-shifting first book, Other People's Children, focused on cultural slippage
in the classroom between white teachers and students of color. Called "phenomenal" (San Francisco
Review of Books) and "a godsend [that is] honest and fair, yet visionary and firm" (Quarterly
Black Review), it received multiple awards and continues to garner high acclaim. Now, in "Multiplication
Is for White People", Delpit reflects on two decades of reform efforts-including No Child Left Behind,
standardized testing, the creation of alternative teacher certification paths, and the charter school movement-that
still have left a generation of poor children of color feeling that higher math isn't for them.
In her wonderful trademark style, punctuated with telling classroom anecdotes and informed by time spent at dozens
of schools across the country, Delpit outlines an inspiring and uplifting blueprint for raising expectations for
other people's children, based on a simple premise: multiplication is for everyone.