No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in LearningBlack and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public schools, and their typically poor performance is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in America today thus, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the racial gap in school achievement is the nation's most critical civil rights issue and an educational crisis; it's no wonder that No Child Left Behind, the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, made