The racial gap in academic achievement is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in the United States today. Black and Latino students typically leave high school with academic skills no better than those of the average white and or Asian eighth-grader. That inequality is morally unacceptable, and it corrupts the fabric of American society and endangers our future. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, in their new book, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (Simon & Schuster, October 2003), describe this problem as one that can and must be solved, even if it demands radical change in the structure of American public education.