Clarence Page, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, discusses two new reports that show that while the national educational achievement gap between black and white students is smaller, the gap between poor and rich kids “has dangerously grown” by around 50% since the late 1980’s, far more than our European counterparts. Writes Page,

For example, out of 55 countries in an Urban Institute study of countries that succeed in improving academic achievement of low-income children, the U.S. ranked 36th, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit that focuses on closing the gap.

“The black-white achievement gap is a terrible travesty in this country,” Amy Wilkins, an Education Trust vice president told NPR’s Talk of the Nation after the latest university studies were released. But now, she said, “We have to pay as much attention to the income gap as we have to the race gap.”