The Editor’s Note

Abstract

To enable more students, especially minorities and those from low-income homes — to reach and achieve in college, schools must lay a solid foundation earlier. That means going beyond sloganeering and applying the cosmetics of a college-going culture to a school: naming classrooms after the college attended by the teacher or having students wear the sweatshirts of their favorite colleges on a given day. Nice gestures, but they hardly replace a rigorous curriculum from kindergarten on up that will prepare graduates with the math and writing skills they’ll need to be successful.