In 21st century America, the staggering disparities in academic outcomes that persist along socio-economic and racial lines represent the nation’s most pressing educational challenge. Data cited by Teach for America to support the assertion that educational inequity persists reveal that:

• Nine-year-olds growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities.
• Half of them won’t graduate from high school by the time they’re 18.
• On average, those who do graduate will read and do math at the level of eighth graders in high-income communities.
• As these students age, the scenario only worsens. While children from families making over $90,000 have a one in two chance of graduating from college by age 24, that number plummets to one in 17 for children from families making less than $35,000.
• These disparities severely limit the life prospects of the 13 million children growing up in poverty today. And, because African-American and Latino/Hispanic children are three times as likely to grow up in a low-income area, these disparities also prevent many children of color from truly having equal opportunities in life.

In the publication Yes We Can: Telling Truths and Dispelling Myths About Race and Education in America, The Education Trust, an education advocacy organization, contends that rather than providing the supports that would enable these students to succeed, the educational system provides less of everything they need — less funding, less challenging coursework and less qualified, less experienced teachers.

Teach for America’s 2005 study Equity Within Reach, asks: “What does the future hold for individuals in our nation who are constrained by an inadequate education? The research is clear — they are more likely to live their entire lives in poverty, more likely to lack adequate healthcare, and more likely to be incarcerated.

“Do these harsh statistical realities arise because children who happen to be born into low-income communities are inherently less capable than their more affluent peers? Those of us who have worked in the classrooms on the front lines of the achievement gap know that nothing could be more false. The truth is that our students’ potential to succeed is nothing less than extraordinary. The critical question of our time, then, is how do we tap that potential and ensure high levels of achievement for all children in this nation?”

At the foundation, our interest in education research and development parses this question into several lines of inquiry: How can we learn what happens in the few exemplary schools that makes success possible? How might we inculcate these lessons in school districts so that we realize this kind of success at scale? How might state policymakers, leaders of reform support organizations and actors in the broader education marketplace be equally inspired to invest in replicating and increasing these demonstrated successes?