Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute. From 1999 to 2002 he was the national education columnist of The New York Times.Rothstein's recent book is Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right. He was a member of the national task force that drafted the statement, "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education" (www.boldapproach.org), and is also the author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap and The Way We Were? Myths and Realities of America’s Student Achievement (1998).