The most immediate challenge is resolving patently contradictory positions that paralyze any serious reform at the national level. Equally important is taking seriously evidence that economic class strongly affects academic achievement. Although it's sometimes fashionable to think otherwise, one hidden lesson emerging from the testing data is that family income and stability counts big in school success. In today's America, wealthy, socially advantaged children outperform just about everyone else in the world. Poorer rural and urban students from broken homes rank dead last.
Class appears far more important than ethnicity.
A 1992 study showed that while U.S. Asians score the highest of all groups on global math tests, wealthy black students outperform them, even though overall African American test scores are low. One of the nation's most cherished beliefs is that the poor can educate themselves out of poverty. Amid growing class divisions, the United States must harmonize its interest in personal responsibility with the reality that education without economic wherewithal may be ineffective. The United States also needs to reconcile immigration and social change with national education goals. Although nativists have long fought against educating immigrants, in a strikingly new development, they are being joined by a growing number of once socially liberal aging baby boomers who are enamored of the lifestyles of a Sweden or Norway.