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  3. In 2014, America’s education system marked an important milestone. For the first time, children of color became a majority among

In 2014, America’s education system marked an important milestone. For the first time, children of color became a majority among

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问题    In 2014, America’s education system marked an important milestone. For the first time, children of color became a majority among K-12 public school students nationwide. Today schools are crossing a second, more troubling, barrier. The latest figures show that 51% of public school students attend schools in which a majority of their classmates qualify as poor or low-income under federal guidelines. This deepening concentration of economic need complicates the intertwined challenges of equipping America’s increasingly diverse young people with the education they need to reach the middle class and developing the skilled workers the U. S. needs to maintain its competitiveness. Without progress in addressing the hardening isolation of low-income families, school reform alone is unlikely to produce the educational results America needs.
   Two converging trends are driving this confluence of negative factors. One is the overall trajectory of poverty. When Bill Clinton left office, the poverty rate for children under 18 stood just over 16%. That rose to 19% under George W. Bush and peaked at 22% under President Obama in 2010. The poverty rate is now 21%. However, it is about 33% for both African Americans and Latinos. The second trend is the growing isolation of poor people. In an important paper this fall, Century Foundation scholar Richard Kahlenberg noted that both rich and poor families are more separated from families in other income brackets today than in 1970. Figures compiled by the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count project show that over the last decade, the share of kids living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty(defined as places where at least 30% of the residents are poor)has increased in most major cities—for example, from 25% to 34% in Los Angeles and 29% to 36% in Chicago.
   These intersecting trends have swelled the portion of kids in schools that also experience concentrated economic need. In 1999, 28% of public school students attended schools where most of their classmates qualified as poor or low-income—their families earned about $ 45,000 or less for a family of four. That number has rocketed to almost 51% , roughly 25 million kids. For students of color, the figures are even higher. Nationwide, about three-fourths of African American and Latino students attend majority-low-income schools. By contrast, only about one-third of whites attend such economically strained schools.
   In the Chicago school system, where 85% of students are black or Latino, the concentration of economic need is overwhelming. In 77 of the city’s roughly 680 public schools, at least 99% of the students qualify as poor or low-income. The share tops 90% in another 388 schools. In only 50 schools do less than half of students qualify as low-income. " You’ re a fourth-grade teacher and coming into that door is 30 students from poverty, broken homes, crime and you are supposed to just, on your own, turn that around," Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told me at a forum I moderated here this week. "That’s impossible. "
   Innovative and tenacious educators can make progress despite these trends. Chicago has developed a creative program of early intervention that has dramatically increased high school graduation rates from about 55% in 2009 to 70% now, with both African American and Latino students demonstrating significant gains. Since 2003, the share of the city’ s fourth-graders who score as "proficient" on National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP)tests has tripled in math and more than doubled in reading(though in each case to only around 30%). Gregory Jones, principal of Chicago’s Kenwood Academy High School, a school where two-thirds of students are low-income, says that slightly more than half of their graduates now finish with some college credit.
   Likewise, across all large cities, African American, Latino and low-income students have posted gains in reading and math since 2003. But the larger trend is the durability of income and racial disparities. The latest NAEP results for large cities found that only about one-fifth of students who qualified as low-income reached the(highest)proficient level in fourth-grade reading or math, compared to just over half of more affluent classmates in reading and nearly three-fifths in math.
   It’s fair to demand that schools rethink and reform to ensure that the interests of children take precedence over the priorities of the adults who run the system. But it’s unrealistic to ask schools to equalize opportunity alone, without more aggressive efforts to revitalize poor neighborhoods and to help more families relocate to more stable communities. Despite heroic exceptions, any national strategy that hopes to improve schools without improving neighborhoods simply won’t add up.
What is the situation of America’s education system in 2014?
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答案a major turning point("an important milestone")for the first time in American history/ "children of color" became a majority among K-12 public school students/ from poor + low-income families/ "increasingly diverse" situation of young students / America’s education + school reform facing more challenges / how to help young people to "reach the middle class" through education / how to develop " the skilled workers" to maintain America’s competitiveness/ "negative factors" in America’s education system
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