Black Issues In Higher Education first started publishing a year after the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" report shocked many into taking seriously the sorry nature of elementary and secondary education in this country. The report's dire warnings of a "rising tide of mediocrity," bolstered by data on the rarity of academic rigor in American schools, have been debated ever since by those who see in the report an overblown criticism of public schools. After all, the report's critics have argued, the American economy is a powerhouse, and the ingenuity of its people a marvel for all the world to wish for. For 20 years debates along those lines have been swirling around, but in the past few years they have crystallized in ways that are of enormous importance to poor kids and kids of color. Those "top kids" are, for the most part, drawn from a very narrow section of students, mostly White and mostly middle and upper-middle class.