Many tout the "no excuses" mantra, from the Education Trust to President Bush, and the Heritage Foundation even titled its report on a group of higher-achieving, high-poverty schools No Excuses. As an antidote to decades of low expectations and substandard teaching for children from poor, often dysfunctional families and neighborhoods, the "no excuses" slogan serves a useful purpose. Unfortunately, it also excuses policy makers from facing some harsh realities about class, culture, and social investments in this country. The impact of poverty on children's capacity to learn and on the nation's ability to close the achievement gap is an issue that has been "left behind." And it makes it very difficult to impose the "no excuses" ultimatum on schools. Despite the reluctance of school reformers to acknowledge that poverty makes a big difference in children's lives and learning, the problem will not stay under wraps. The National Center for Education Statistics is following kindergartners through the primary grades and so far cannot document any ameliorating effect of schools on the disadvantages caused by poverty. On average, children from low-income families enter kindergarten lagging on cognitive skills; by third grade, they are scoring 18 points lower on reading tests than students who do not come from low-income families. To understand why this can happen in the richest nation in the world, one needs to understand how poverty robs children of all sorts of opportunities to learn, to become curious, and to be guided wisely by adults. As a result of all sorts of non-school influences, poor children, through no fault of their own, cannot compete. They have higher rates of lead poisoning, they go to bed hungry or ill fed more often, they move more frequently, they watch more television, and they have less access not only to adults who can read to them but also to those who can talk to them in intellectually enriching ways. There is another critical "no excuses" challenge for school leaders. If they really want every child to succeed--and every school to meet its accountability goals--then they need to mobilize and help create the policies to reduce poverty and its effects in their communities.