The good news is that the achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. are smaller than they were several decades ago. The bad news is that progress stopped around 1990. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) continues to show large differences between the average scores of blacks and Hispanics on the one hand and those of whites and Asians on the other. Now, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, while progress is evident and many milestones have been achieved-especially in the area of civil rights-policy measures focused on rights, resources, and required testing for students have not achieved their full promise for raising achievement and narrowing gaps between groups of students. And it is the failure to go behind the classroom door and foster high-quality instructional practices for all students, in all classrooms, in all schools that is strongly implicated in these disappointing results.