The passing of Jesse Hill, Jr. leaves a huge void in the body politic and societal fabric of Atlanta, the state of Georgia, the nation, and the world. Mr. Hill gave of his seemingly boundless talents and energy to causes great and small that changed the quality of life for communities and individuals alike.

The horrendous news from Newtown, Connecticut has pierced our hearts. A black-clad man in his 20s armed with two semi-automatic handguns entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School and made an elementary school for kindergartners through fourth graders the scene of the worst mass shooting in a public school in American history. Twenty children were shot and killed. Seven adults were shot and killed. We don’t yet know how many were wounded. We do know dozens of parents are experiencing the worst nightmare any parent could imagine. We do know more than 500 young children in the school are traumatized. 

By now, it’s old news that Kasandra Perkins was murdered by Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher, who was her boyfriend and the father of her daughter. By now we’ve read about how great a teammate Belcher was, how dedicated to his girlfriend and daughter. We’ve read his hardscrabble story of moving from the University of Maine, hardly a football powerhouse, to a coveted slot in the NFL. Belcher has been humanized, even enshrined, as his friends have talked about him not having a violent bone in his body.

This year New York is facing the worst homeless crisis since the Great Depression. The city homeless population included a record-breaking 42,888 children. The many ways poverty scars a child today and long into the future are well-documented. Children who have to navigate the harsh reality of homelessness on top of poverty often fall through our already porous safety nets and disproportionately drop out of school and then too often drop into the prison pipeline.

In my own family, that legacy of oppression overcome weighed on my late father, Emmett Rice. He was a brilliant, proud man-an economics professor a senior official at the Treasury Department and the World Bank, and a Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. But his life of service came despite ferocious odds. My dad grew up between the wars in segregated South Carolina, and he never forgot the sting of separate and unequal.

Everyone agrees that America's high schools need to do a better job of preparing students to be "college- and career-ready." But the big problem is, how do we get them to do that?