How America Is Failing Millions of High-Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families

This report takes a comprehensive look at achievement for low-income promising learners—past, present, and future. At its core, it challenges the nation to move beyond its near-singular focus of achieving minimum performance for all students, to identifying and developing the talent of all students who are capable of high achievement, including promising low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse students who too often literally languish in the schools. This report also sets the stage for major strides in both understanding and action, by spotlighting strong evidence-based program models that produce performance results for low-income, high-ability learners, recommending educational best practices, and identifying both research and public policy gaps that, if filled, could achieve significant results for the future.