A quality education that leads to good jobs offers a reliable pathway to economic security, yet the first step on that pathway remains inaccessible to far too many Americans, especially Americans of color. Nowhere is this inequity more apparent than in engineering. On average, people with engineering bachelor's degrees earn higher salaries than people with bachelor's degrees in any other field, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 690,000 engineering job openings by 2022. This report on Change the Equation's analysis of U.S. Department of Education data reveals that African Americans and Hispanics remain much less likely than white Americans to reap these rewards, presenting both a moral and an economic crisis that deepens income inequality in the U.S. while leaving the creative potential of millions of Americans untapped. We cannot address these inequities through college programs alone. This report discusses the strategy of strengthening the pipeline to engineering and other STEM fields in our elementary and secondary schools by setting high academic expectations for all students while greatly expanding minorities' access to advanced STEM learning opportunities.