“Every year thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of students in NYC are basically not succeeding, not getting to a performance level that will allow them to participate fully in American society.  Most of them are children of color. They fall behind in grade school are utterly unprepared for middle school math and English and high school is just a long four years of accumulating credit in any way they can to get out—those that do grad. And it is the way it is. Now people, including you and me, see how devastating it is for them to not even be in the school building and we make hay. But does it really matter if the kid in 8th grade is in the 5th quintile or the 4th?”