Executive Summary Education policymakers at both the state and federal level are struggling to identify ways to improve the academic achievement of public school students. Faced with the substandard academic performance of some student groups and the persistence of achievement discrepancies between certain racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups of students, policymakers' need for information t...

Congress has not commanded that the less qualified be preferred over the better qualified simply because of minority origins. Far from disparaging job qualifications as such, Congress has made such qualifications the controlling factor, so that race, religion, nationality, and sex become irrelevant.'