Powerful piece by Kati Haycock, “Look to Schools to Solve the Achievement Gap:”

It’s “easy to blame low achievement among these students on uninvolved parents or the burdens of poverty and race…But while the achievement gap has roots outside of schools — serious ones that we must address — it has solutions inside the school walls.”

The shameful truth about America’s public schools system is this: If you’re a young person of color or come from a poor or working-class family, you stand a pretty high chance of getting a second-rate education.

In fact, the latest national data show that more than half of all African-American and Latino fourth-graders are unable to read at even a basic level. And, math skills of low-income eighth-graders are more than twice as likely to be below basic as those of their more affluent classmates

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