Is There a Preference?

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High expectations. The fifth item on your list would also apply to the parents that you'd want to encourage the parents to aim high and assume that they will rise just like their kids will. If you look in the education childhood longitudinal survey. Something like 30% of black families think the kids are going to get a PhD when they're in kindergarten. For blacks we have been for whites. I don't know what to make of that but I'm just saying it's not obvious to me at all that they're different preferences or views or expectations or goals there's a different set of constraints.

The good news about educational reform, says Harvard economist Roland Fryer, is that we know what it takes to turn a school around. The bad news is that it's hard work--and implementing it won't win you any popularity contests. Listen as the MacArthur Genius Award Winner and John Bates Clark medalist speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how pizza parties revealed the potential of incentives to improve students' test scores, and why he's far more concerned about closing the racial achievement gap than keeping the love of learning pure. He also discusses the five best practices of successful schools, and why it's his failures far more than his successes that keep him in this fight.