The history of public education in the United States is both a story of great promise, and of systematic exclusion. These two realities continue side by side, today. For white, and affluent children, public education holds great promise. Black, Brown and low-income children continue to be denied access to that promise.

In 2006, Gloria Ladson-Billings, then president of the American Educational Research Association, introduced the concept of the “education debt.” She argued that we as a nation must address the historic, economic, sociopolitical and moral origins of the academic achievement gap if we are to succeed in closing it.

Confronting the Education Debt, by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools argues that still today, the disenfranchisement of communities of color has allowed elected policymakers to pursue priorities that deny children—especially Black, Brown and low-income children—the educational opportunities they deserve.

Instead of funding our schools, policy decisions are made that increase personal and corporate wealth, drawing down public revenues in the process. Instead of funding our schools, we have seen an explosion of policies that criminalize Black and Brown communities, including young people. Instead of funding our public schools, privatization soaks up education dollars and strips the budgets of traditional public districts. All of these trends continue to compound the education debt.

A student who entered kindergarten in 2005 would have graduated from high school this past May.