Hard work pays off

Regarding “Despite strides, still a ways to go” (Open Forum, June 9): Shamann Walton is right to ask for community help in closing the achievement gap, but his approach reflects the obsessive continuation of a failed paradigm, looking to blame racism for the gap.

This gap is a huge problem, with test score gaps leading to huge income gaps in the future. However, he exhorts us to seek out inequalities in resources rather than try to eliminate inequalities in effort, tutoring, support and parenting, which are the primary causes of the gap. I have five Latino and African American children who have all scored above the 97th percentile on state tests. I’ve never allowed them to blame anyone but themselves for a B grade, and none feel San Francisco Unified School District is racist toward them.

Chinese, Korean, Indian and Nigerian American kids, even those in poverty, are far outperforming whites in school and future income. How? Long study hours, flash cards, early home education, workbooks and reading, which anyone could choose to do, as former President Barack Obama has said, and less TV/gaming/ social media. We can’t be afraid to say some groups study far fewer hours than others, and that changing this would solve the problem. You can’t change a trailing performance without taking responsibility and sacrificing more. Hard work pays off.

Justin Van Zandt, San Francisco