Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education Author: Greg J. Duncan Richard J. Murnane | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HCSCNO4 | Format: PDF
Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education Description
In this landmark volume, Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane lay out a meticulously researched case showing how—in a time of spiraling inequality—strategically targeted interventions and supports can help schools significantly improve the life chances of low-income children.
A crowning contribution from two leading economists in the field of education,
Restoring Opportunity is a passionate call to action on behalf of the young people on whom our nation’s future depends. This book is a copublication with the Russell Sage Foundation.
“Duncan and Murnane provide a no-nonsense view of the growing educational gap between the haves and the have-nots in America. They also scour the landscape to find promising solutions that provide hope for better outcomes in the future. This is a thoughtful book that should be read with the care it merits.”
—Joel Klein, CEO of Amplify, and former chancellor, New York City Department of Education
“This thorough examination of our public school system provides a clear picture of some of the toughest challenges—particularly those facing low-income students—and the directions in which we need to go to fix them. This book should be on the desk of every educator and policy maker in America so we can begin to change the odds for all of America’s children.”
—Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO, Harlem Children’s Zone
“Anyone who cares about improving schools should read this book. Duncan and Murnane offer detailed case studies of effective programs to improve schools that can boost the life chances of disadvantaged children. The authors present a careful analysis, grounded in economics and education, of the ways to make better schooling available to all of the nation’s low-income children.”
—David K. Cohen, John Dewey Collegiate Professor of Education and professor of public policy, University of Michigan
- File Size: 2266 KB
- Print Length: 200 pages
- Publisher: Harvard Education Press (December 13, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HCSCNO4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,816 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Duncan and Murnane are professors of education at U.C. Irvine and Harvard respectively. We have a crisis in education, one hard to address sensibly in a politicized climate of well-meaning but inflexible advocacy. In clear and simple exposition, the authors point out that our schools today no longer facilitate the "American Dream" of upward mobility. Instead, children of low-income families are more likely to face economic hardships while children of high-income families have structural advantages which secure them the jobs of the future. Education was once the great leveler, but no more. The term the authors use for this fork in the road is "divergent destinies," a phrase congenial to a feudal society and deadly to a democratic one. We read regularly about income disparity in America, as wealth of "Gilded Age" or Roman patrician proportions accumulates in the accounts of the super-rich. Now we learn that the poor are closed out from rising to the middle. How long before the curse of class consciousness and class conflict become American political forces? Not long unless we address the problems this book outlines and the prescriptions it offers.
Just as its analysis of the problem is neither judgmental nor hysterical, but calmly reasoned, the solutions it offers are a blend of the best of all solutions tried. Take accountability. This book does avoids the polemics of the battlefield of "accountability." It argues for "sensible accountability." Accountability alone, as in exit tests which keep the poor from graduating, without the assistance needed to master the material one is held accountable for (and the teachers, and the schools, and the state, and the country) is destructive and not "sensible.
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