Education policies have too often ignored how conditions outside of school can alter life chances for young people, especially students of color, before they even reach the classroom. More recently, COVID-19 has made it impossible to overlook the needs of the whole child, both inside and outside of school. The authors assert that responding to a number of factors like air quality, housing, public health, community safety, segregation, and neighborhood conditions are essential to improving academic outcomes and student health. "Our Children Can't Wait" urges readers to reconsider what education policy is, what it could be, who it is for, and who should be directly shaping it at all levels of government. Experts present a new equity roadmap by bridging scholarship, ideas, and original thinking on education policy as a vehicle for setting a redemptive path forward for reckoning with race in America. This book: (1) Presents a new, evidence-based blueprint for addressing persistent gaps in education opportunity through a number of interrelated social policies; (2) Includes contributing authors from 17 organizations and universities, representing a powerful national network of scholars; (3) Goes beyond diagnosing or identifying challenges to present solutions in the form of tools and promising models; (4) Offers strategies for preventing more students from experiencing homelessness or entering the criminal justice system through strategic investments; and (5) Addresses timely issues that are in the hearts and minds of many key stakeholders in no small part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [Foreword written by Becky Pringle.]