For the past 15 years, economist Ronald Ferguson has investigated the myriad factors that combine to create racial disparities in academic performance. This volume brings together Ferguson's most important papers and most recent thinking on these issues. In language accessible and useful to education practitioners, Ferguson sets forth a wide-ranging and compelling vision for closing the achievement gap. Beginning with his analysis of the impact of test scores in predicting racial wage gaps, Ferguson has explored how rates of progress in narrowing gaps have varied over the recent decades, the roles played by various school policies and practices, and the importance of lifestyles and informal social processes that play out between children and their parents and peers. He concludes that closing achievement gaps is more urgent today than ever before--and that dramatic success is possible.