Well... they did not say it was an intrinsic superiority/inferiority. They said there was a cultural rejection of learning. Not inability to learn... a bias acting negatively against learning. Granted It would be more politically correct and far less controversial to state this whole issue in terms of economic status rather than in racial terms. Instead of african american culture you could describe it as the culture of the the projects/urban lower income vrs that of the middle-upper class. However it isn't inaccurate or racist to say there are cultural issues which impact academic success faced by african american children regardless of their family economic status. In other words issues that most certainly are cultural in nature. Black middle-upper income kids are an unfortunately small minority in most african american communities who tend to feel torn between the social norms of both groups. And those social norms are most certainly not academically neutral. That was a pretty much the whole premise behind the 'Fresh Prince' show with Will Smith. See Carlton in any episode where he wants to 'be cool like Will' for one side and any show with Will actually trying to succeed at school without being 'Carlton'. A silly show... but one that had its finger on the pulse of a very serious issue.
While the driving factor here is far more likely to be economic than racial it is going a bit far to say there are no cultural issues involved. The dividing lines of race and economic status track unfortunately close in this country. They are both correlated strongly to academic success (or lack of)... as for which provides causation (if either) is still a subject of plenty of debate.
For more examples of this in media (excellent for cultural references) go disect some of the following tv shows and movies... Good Will Hunting, Family Matters, Finding Forrester, Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, and Coach Carter.
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head and I find it telling that only one entails the story of a poor white person becoming successful. Consider if you will how successful Mat Damon's character has to be in comparison to some of the other feel good stories I mentioned to make that story 'special'. Will Hunting's success would be so by ANY standard. What is so impressive about a school getting its kids past a standard exam? Why is it special that a group of low income hispanic high school kids learned Calculus? Perhaps particularly relevant to this tangent go watch Coach Carter and really consider the reaction both by the media, community, and the school to his refusal to let his players play on academic grounds. Going a bit deeper pick through the differences in peer interactions with regards to intelligence between Screech in saved by the bell and Erkle in Family matters.... Or the same for Forester and Will Hunting.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Accurately judging the ability of a teacher to teach is a true bastard of a problem. You have the issue under discussion here of different cultural approaches to education. You have the issue of inheriting the results of a long line of less than stellar education... ie systemic problem... and the basic difficulty of how to measure success in such a way that doesn't torpedo the education process in the first place (teaching the test, grade inflation etc...). My suggestion would be to avoid trying to rate their success in the classroom on the fly. You should have successive teachers rate the results in related subjects further down the line IE as a teacher in a subject you should provide a 'grade' for the pervious teachers ability to ground the student properly for starting the next level. After all the true success of a teacher is not in getting a kid to pass a test... but to actually instill long term skills and knowledge. If a teacher is constantly having to backfill and re-cover building block knowledge for a significant percentage of students from a particular teacher that is a very good indication they can't teach.
Proving a teacher can't teach is almost impossible on the individual level, and difficult even at the 'class' level. Many many factors go into the ability of a teacher to successfully impart knowledge to a group of kids, and quite a few of them are not in their control. When they encounter problems such as unruly children there are precious few things they can do about it. Getting rid of teachers is hard... so is getting rid of the spoiled apple(s) ruining the bunch. In the cases where there are systemic issues they often have the impossible task of trying to catch the entire class up to where they should already be in addition to trying to actual advance them through the material at hand. Whether it is cultural or economic based this is particularly common problem in school systems made up primarily of lower income students, particularly in urban areas.
