Most fundamentally, school systems need to put higher quality teachers in poor schools under conditions in which they can actually teach and not just… - Robert D. Putnam

Caring for kids was once a more widely shared, collective responsibility, but that ethic has faded in recent decades.

Schools themselves aren't creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and does not grow as children progress through school. The gaps in cognitive achievement by level of maternal education that we observe at age 18-powerful predictors of who goes to college and who does not - are mostly present at age 6when children enter school. Schooling plays only a minor role in alleviating or creating test score gaps.

today is a place of stark class divisions, where (according to school officials) wealthy kids park BMW convertibles in the high school lot next to decrepit junkers that homeless classmates drive away each night to live in.