States Get Poor Grades on Closing Achievement Gaps

Despite the attention focused on poor and minority students by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, most states are doing a poor job of narrowing achievement gaps, concludes a “report card” released last week.

Issued by the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank, the report gives states an average grade of D on student achievement. It argues that progress has been negligible since the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, the landmark report warning of a “rising tide of mediocrity” in American public schools.

“Student achievement in the U.S. remains essentially flat even as the demands of a 21st-century economy stiffen and the education systems of other lands outpace ours,” the report says. “The U.S. urgently needs to become a nation in which every child learns to his or her full potential between...