[More Skills Won’t Help Kids Succeed Is school the ‘great equalizer’? This is a central question education researchers try to answer, and Mr. Edsall recently reflected on some scholarship pointing to the importance of kids’ skills in this discussion. But focusing on skills ignores a real issue — that schools differently treat kids’ skills depending on their student demographic.To summarize, the “skills gap” refers to the idea that kids’ unequal development of skills is a source of educational inequality. As the story goes, kids from poorer families learn fewer skills than those from wealthier families. Wealthier parents raise their children in ways that help them develop skills needed in our technologically advancing economy, and poorer parents do not.But blaming either parents or kids’ lack of skills is a tired logic, misdirecting us away from how schools operate to create divides among students.Photo by Sam BayleIn 2013–14, I conducted a comparative evaluation of how three middle schools serving demographically different, but similarly skilled, students were treated by teachers. Consistent with over a decade of research about young folks’ digital technology use, the young people in this study — regardless of their demographic background — loved playing around with friends online. Even low-income students had basic technology access to play around online. And as learning scientists have found, playing online led to the development of basic digital skills, like facility with devices, how to communicate with others online, and creating and sharing new media. These are skills increasingly taught by educators as valuable to our ever-changing economy.What happened when students brought their skills with technology to school? Even though the schools in this study were best case scenarios to teach digital skills — each school was equipped with the latest in digital technology, teachers and administrators were committed to using them to teach digital skills, and most students already knew digital basics from ]