aforementioned harrowing facts

the aforementioned harrowing facts about education in DC and in the nation include:

--On the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) in 2007, which tests students' skills in reading and math:

•  only 46% of the elementary students scored at or above proficiency in reading and only 40% were at or above proficiency in math
•  among secondary students, 39% scored at or above proficiency in reading and 36% scored at or above proficiency in math.

 -- 57% of students in DCPS qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. (DCteachingfellows.org)

--In terms of race and class:

• Even when parents' income and wealth is comparable, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and immigrants for whom English is not a first language lag behind English-speaking, native-born, white students.  (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/15_04/Race154.shtml)
• The wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. school districts spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. (http://www.pbs.org/weta/twoschools/thechallenge/gap/)
• Jonathan Kozol, in works such as Savage Inequalities and Amazing Grace, has meticulously and heart-wrenchingly documented the differences between schools such as Paterson, NJ and Princeton, NJ; Mott Haven in the Bronx and Stuyvesant High School.
• Even within schools, as UCLA professor Jeannie Oakes described in the 1980s and Harvard professor Gary Orfield's research has recently confirmed, most minority students are segregated in lower-track classes with larger class sizes, less qualified teachers, and lower-quality curriculum.

--A Teacher's Mandate:

• Minority students are about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers and twice as likely to be assigned to the least effective.
  
• After controlling for socioeconomic status, the large disparities in achievement between black and white students were almost entirely due to differences in the qualifications of their teachers.
  

All this means that we, as beginning teachers without many of the experiences that more experienced teachers have, have quite the job in front of us.  The stakes of teaching in these conditions--in a country that claims to be founded on principles of equality for all--are nothing short of life-or-death.