Education policymakers are on the wrong track, author and former civil rights leader Bob Moses told an audience yesterday at the Graduate School of Education's Askwith Forum.

Instead of focusing resources on getting select students into the best schools, the country needs to create a floor below which no students-even those in the inner cities-fall, Moses said.

Moses recently published a book called "Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights." He currently heads the Algebra Project, a program designed to teach math to inner-city and rural children in an effort to prepare them for the new world of technology.

"Computers have brought about a new literacy," Moses said. "What do people say when an adult can't read? We call him illiterate. What do we call adults who can't do math? Simply adults who can't do math. In 50 years, they will be called illiterate."