> Do we just put everyone in honors classes at every school? No. Why not? Obviously that's discriminatory right? Of course not. At least in San Francisco there

> Do we just put everyone in honors classes at every school? No. Why not? Obviously that's discriminatory right? Of course not. At least in San Francisco there is a movement to remove options like honors classes, and it stems from the same basic, ill-conceived premises. And regarding your list of reasons for poor performance, at least in San Francisco none of them really apply. They don't apply because they've each been systematically addressed, and addressed quite well, yet the huge performance gap remains. At the end of the day, the most significant factors by a huge margin involve home environment, particularly parental involvement and expectations, and you can't address those very well with school policies. And while clearly a major issue there is economic, it's not just economics. I remember visiting Singapore and seeing young, elementary school-age children from families in public housing hanging out in groups at McDonald's doing homework at 8PM. No parental supervision at all, and doubtless some of their parents--both of them--were working 12+ hour days, anyhow. American kids of any ethnicity, rich or poor, aren't going to do that, but it goes to show that there's also a significant cultural component as well. And simply mixing socioeconomic classes in school won't fix that because in American culture the middle- and upper-classes hide their educational norms. They hide them because studying isn't cool. So all poor kids see are the results, not the process. As someone who grew up without those norms it was very confusing to me. I never understood why kids who never seemed to study got such great grades, but as an adult I know why--it's because they were more-or-less studying secretly. (Some of them were trading notes secretly, and even cheating secretly, but it's the same basic point--it's an invisible system that poor kids can't adopt by osmosis and modeling, which is the basic premise behind these movements.)