Keith Poston, executive director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, told the News & Observer, “Students who show promise need to be challenged. Schools need to see their promise and push them into more rigorous classes early so they aren’t left behind and left out.” The track, once begun in the fourth grade, provides opportunities for learning that make college admission more likely years later.

Conversely, the implicit message to qualified students not so recognized is that they aren’t really that bright and are not expected to perform at a high level. A math coach described the impact when students are left behind: “Once…off the track, it’s almost impossible to get back on. Kids know when they are not being challenged. They know when they’re moved out of that environment. The way they see themselves shifts, and they don’t make it back up until they’re adults.”

For families trying to move upward, the cost of a biased system is high. From one mother’s perspective, getting a fair shot at success should not be in question: “As a single mother and a minority, I want to trust the school system to do the best thing for my children. I want them to have my children’s best interest at heart and push them to their potential.”

There seems little reason to see these outcomes as unrelated to the bias built into the system. Using test results to compare groups of students, the analysis found, “In Wake County, 24 percent of low-income third graders scoring a 5 in 2014 were labeled gifted in math the following school year. The percentage for their higher-income counterparts was more than twice as high: 54 percent. Overall, 25 percent of Wake’s more affluent fourth-grade students were labeled gifted in math in 2015, versus three percent of students from lower-income households.”

Read the full article about educational barriers by Martin Levine at Nonprofit Quarterly