Schools can only work with the children that parents present to them. Successful schools build on successful families.
Many of the formal skills acquired through education must be built on soft skills such as sociability, flexibility, initiative and self-discipline that are formed and nurtured within the family.
Most of the skill gaps that are present at the age of 18 – skill gaps which substantially explain gaps in adult earnings and employment in all groups – are also present at the age of five (Cunha and Heckman 2007).
There is much evidence to show that disadvantaged children have lower levels of soft skills (non-cognitive skills): motivation, persistence, self-discipline, the ability to work with others, the ability to defer gratification and plan ahead, etc. (Heckman 2008). Most of the skills that are acquired at school build on these soft skills that are moulded and reinforced within families.
Although these non-cognitive skills that are nurtured by families are as predictive, if not more predictive, of what will happen in school, earnings, employment and crime than any other factor, non-cognitive skills were largely neglected until recently in devising policies to reduce income inequality (Cunha, Heckman and Lochner 2006).
With the newly minted 1964 Civil Rights Act as the backdrop for the social and political context in which it was released, The Coleman Report, authored by prominent sociologist James S. Coleman (1966), offered “…substantial support for civil rights activism” (Urban, 2009, p. 360) from a novel perspective, that of the realm of social science inquiry. Coleman’s(1966) research team responded to the mandate to find tenable explanations for the educational inequality so lamented by the champions of the civil rights movement by bringing to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness “…issues relating social class to minority and majority students’ educational achievement” (Urban, 2009, p. 360). The fascinating results outlined in the report spoke to many facets of educational inequality, and, I believe, offered a tangible direction for both politicians and educators alike who sought to rectify the inequalities that were inherently part of the public school system of that era.
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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