This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

KEY TAKEAWAYS

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  Until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males.
  
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  Students from low-income backgrounds tend to have lower educational attainment than students from wealthier backgrounds.
  
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  African Americans and Latinos tend to have lower educational attainment than non-Latino whites and Asians.
  
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  Gender influences educational attainment in a complex fashion; older women have lower educational attainment than older men, but younger women have greater educational attainment than younger men.
  
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  The United States ranks behind many other industrial nations in the quality of the education its citizens receive.