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writing materials. The environment is not always conducive to learning and when this is multiplied from elementary to middle to high school, the result is a lower achievement gap.

President Barack Obama has listed several goals pertaining to education on the new White House website. Some of the more aggressive include a Zero-to-Five initiative to build a strong learning foundation for toddlers, a stronger preschool program, and increases in teacher salaries. These movements will begin to offer black students a stronger academic future. If a teacher is paid the worth of their profession, they will be more dedicated to the achievement of all their students, the schools will have resources to recruit the best and brightest, and pay-for-performance versus an outdated tenure system will ensure that the best remain in the schools. Organizations such as Teach for America and initiatives in many states to allow mid-career professionals to enter the teaching profession all serve to offer black students a greater opportunity to have better teachers, smaller class sizes, and increased opportunities to learn.

In the middle and high school years the achievement gap sometimes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for lower income students particularly. If they are confronted with life issues such as not enough to eat each day, their performance tends to suffer. This is coupled with the tendency for some school districts to warehouse students in lower achieving classes. Again, this is not the case for all black students but tends to be the case for lower income black students. The schools should be held accountable for how they track students and how they counsel students in course selection. Race should not be a factor in whether a child can enroll in higher order classes or be placed in a general education track that will not lead to academic rigor.

Another thing that can be done to close the gap is for schools to actually teach the basics instead of teaching to a test as a result of the No Child Left Behind measurements. Academic righor such as phonics at the early elementary grades and elimination of experimenting with methods such as Whole Language or Invented Writing will give a stronger foundation. A more rigorous program of reading, writing, math, and science at the elementary level that stress corrected spelling, proper pronunciation, foundational skills such as memorizing the times tables and the periodic tables will give the students a greater foundation. A final thing

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