California: Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars in funding, test scores for white, Asian American and wealthier students are much higher than those of their black, Latino and low-income peers

On computerized tests administered in the spring, for example, just 19% of African American students were proficient in math, compared with 73% of Asian American students. In San Francisco, school leaders noted that the city was the only urban district in the state where more than half of students were proficient in both math and English. The middle schools showed significant gains this year in both subjects, with students of color mirroring the increases. The achievement gap actually widened, though, including a 58-point difference between white and black San Francisco students in English — a 77% proficiency rate compared with 19%.