School Reform and Equal Opportunity in America's Geography of Inequality

Abstract

How can the American educational system be improved for all? What can and should be done about substandard inner-city schooling that leaves large numbers of poor and overwhelmingly minority children incapable of effective civic participation and ineligible for good jobs? These perennial issues of politics and public policy implicate fundamental principles of justice. Educational choices involve, among other things, choices about a future in which children's life chances will take shape either under the sway of inherited privilege or on the basis of equal citizenship and opportunity. In the midst of America's vast and growing inequalities of income and wealth, which continue to be associated with race, how can we clothe ourselves in comforting myths of equal opportunity if we fail to provide good schools for everyone?