volume). Similarly, the gap between Hispanics and whites was 40 percent smaller in 1990 than in 1975.³ For both blacks and Hispanics, there were years around 1990 when the gap with whites in math scores was more than 40 percent narrower than in 1973. The bad news is that progress stopped around 1990.⁴ In 1999, when the latest NAEP test was administered, large differences remained between average scores for blacks and Hispanics on one hand and whites and Asians on the other.⁵

Focusing on test-score disparities, this paper concerns what researchers have learned about equalizing educational opportunities and outcomes among racial groups, primarily blacks and whites, in the last half-century. While progress is evident and many milestones have been achieved, especially in civil rights, policy measures focused on rights, resources, and testing requirements for students have not achieved their full promise for raising achievement and narrowing gaps. Failure to foster high-quality instructional practices in all schools and classrooms and for all students is strongly implicated in these disappointing results. Now is a time to supplement other policies with a more determined, high-quality research-based emphasis on improving what happens in classrooms. We agree that the types of incentives being imposed by the current standards movement are important, but principals and teachers need help knowing how best to respond to them. Chapter 6 in this volume describes what progress might entail, by discussing instructional regimes that recent research has shown to be effective. It reports experience introducing those regimes into schools and classrooms and working to make them routine.

This paper provides some historical background with an emphasis on what research has shown about the effectiveness of past policies. We present a historical overview that touches on a number of topics related to rights, resources, and requirements in education reform over the past half-century. Then we focus in more detail on research about ways that desegregation, grouping and tracking practices, and class sizes relate to achievement disparities. We focus on these topics because of their interdependence with instructional quality and their historical and contemporary policy importance. For example, we ask, “Are grouping and tracking practices among the reasons that racial desegregation seems to produce only small achievement gains, and how does the answer relate to instructional quality?” And “Do we know enough about class size effects to justify strong claims about the advantages of class size reductions for raising achievement, compared with investments in instructional quality?” Our aim is to present an informed perspective on what research has established and what remains to be learned about a number of important questions.