Released in 2018, this report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is about the excellence gap and shows that state policies nationwide are failing to effectively support students who have the potential to reach high levels of academic performance, particularly students from low-income backgrounds. The excellence gap refers to the disparity in the percent of lower-income versus higher-income students who reach advanced levels of academic performance. The “gap” appears in elementary school and continues as students move through middle school, high school, college and beyond. This report grades states on 18 simple indicators representing nine distinct state-level policies and nine specific measures of student outcomes. This report is an update to the original 2015 version.
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