1 .		Based on what you have read in this chapter, summarize what you understand to be the causes for the gap between the scholastic achievement of white and black students. Which of the proposed solutions seem to be the most realistic? What would be needed for these solutions to be put into practice? Introduction Set above the leafy banks of the Hudson River, this cluster of villages north of New York City has long cultivated a reputation as an idyll of diversity and tolerance. Interracial families seek out the town as a place where they can live without incident. The charge, then, hit right at the heart. Armed with previously unreleased statistics broken down by race, a group of parents, black and white, accused the school district of systematic segregation: steering blacks away from honors classes and into special education and allowing test scores of blacks to lag far behind those of whites for a decade. The release of the numbers divided the community in a way most people here thought nothing ever could. While some black parents said the statistics confirmed the discrimination they suspected, others denounced the group's report as perpetuating painful stereotypes. In the tension, car windows were smashed and sidewalk confrontations erupted. The conflict here offers a cautionary tale. Closing the gap between black and white achievement has become the nation's thorniest education challenge. Impressed by success in Texas, many states hope to do what the parents here did: release scores by race. The idea, state officials say, is that exposing the disparity forces school districts to seek to eliminate it. But Nyack's experience suggests that the path from releasing numbers to improving schools can be exceptionally rough terrain, that merely acknowledging the existence of a gap is a process filled with pain and controversy. from Kate Zernike, New York Times, August 4, 2000   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.