Kids are finally returning to school. But most of them are white.

President Joe Biden is on the verge of meeting his 100-day pledge to press the majority of American schools into reopening for five days of weekly in-person instruction. But there’s a problem. Most of the kids returning to classes are white. Minority students are most likely to be missing out on in-person learning, despite assurances of classroom safety under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and outreach by local and state school districts. It’s a key challenge facing Biden as he moves beyond his first months in office, and one the administration insists it is prepared to tackle. Dramatic demographic and geographic divides over in-person learning have emerged in the U.S. since the beginning of the year, according to estimates from the Education Department’s research arm and data from independent trackers. Eighty percent of public schools were open for at least some in-person learning by the end of February, according to a government survey, but an estimated 78 percent of Asian eighth-graders were learning in a fully remote environment. Nearly 60 percent of Black and Hispanic eighth-graders also learned at home full time.