The racial gap in student achievement isn't one of the biggest issues in education; it's one of the biggest issues in the country. A new report by Paul Barton for the Educational Testing Service breaks up this complicated issue into its bite-sized parts, providing a useful piece of summary research on the subject. Barton uses 14 "correlates" of relevant statistics that can be compared across racial groups and 12 in which data can matched across income groups. Warning the reader that there are only certain areas in which there is a research consensus and complaining that educational research is often of questionable quality, Barton embarks on the task of tracing the impact of certain factors on the achievement gap. The correlates include not only school related predictors of student achievement such as curriculum rigor and teacher experience but also factors from "before and beyond school." These include such "non-education" issues as birthweight, exposure to lead, and prevalence of two-parent households that all have strong influences on student achievement. Especially interesting are Barton's attention to the aspects of the community and the household, such as student mobility and parent participation, which impact achievement. On teacher quality issues, there are no surprises: high minority/high poverty schools are more likely to have less experienced teachers and more instructors teaching out-of-field.