A letter to our next president

Abstract

The next president of the United States faces monumental challenges in the areas of national defense, the economy, and health care. However, one daunting domestic issue the nation must face is the continued educational inequity that exists between children of color and their white counterparts in our schools. This article looks at four facets of the educational equity challenge and reframes the discourse from one of achievement gaps to education debt. The four facets of that debt are historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral. Without this more robust look at how these disparities occur, the nation's schools will continue to tinker with peripheral issues such as more testing, continued grade retention, and punishing students and teachers, and fail to solve our real education problems. © 2008 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.