American schools are hotbeds for racial discrimination, according to a preliminary report from a group of United Nations experts.

The U.N.’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent traveled around the U.S. last month to learn more about the various structural barriers and challenges African-American face. The group, which plans to release its full report in September, has given the media its preliminary findings, including several recommendations about reducing inequality in the U.S. education system.

The overall findings — which touch on topics of police brutality, school curriculum and mass incarceration — are bleak. African-Americans tend to have lower levels of income, education and food security than other Americans. This reflects “the level of structural discrimination that creates de facto barriers for people of African descent to fully exercise their human rights,” says the group’s statement.

Controversy surrounding the way schools teach about the history of slavery also spiked in October, after a Texas mother discovered that her child’s textbook described slaves as “workers” in a section about immigration.

“It talked about the U.S.A. being a country of immigration, but mentioning the slave trade in terms of immigration was just off,” Roni Dean-Burren, who documented her offense in social media posts that went viral, told The New York Times. “It’s that nuance of language. This is what erasure looks like.”