Closing the Opportunity Gap
What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance
Published on 30. May 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-19-998299-8 (ISBN)
Description
While the achievement gap has dominated policy discussions over the past two decades, relatively little attention has been paid to a gap that is even more at odds with American ideals: the opportunity gap. Opportunity and achievement, while inextricably connected, are very different goals. Every American will not go to college, but every American should be given fair opportunities to be prepared for college. By obsessively focusing on measuring achievement, the nation's policymakers have made little progress in measuring or addressing inequitable opportunities. Policy therefore fails to engage with the challenges, supports, and resources that lead to improvements in student learning. The achievement gap has not arisen by coincidence; children learn when they have opportunities to learn, and gaps in opportunities have led to gaps in achievement. Moreover, students' learning experiences and outcomes are deeply affected by many factors outside of the immediate control of schools.
Closing the Opportunity Gap brings together top experts who offer evidence-based essays that paint a powerful picture of denied opportunities. They also describe sensible, research-based policy approaches to enhance opportunities. They highlight the discrepancies that exist in our society and in our public schools, focusing on how policy decisions and broader circumstances conspire to create the opportunity gap that leads inexorably to the outcome differences that have become so stark. The volume makes a compelling case that American educational policy must move beyond the conventional focus on achievement and opens a discussion about the common sense ways schools can and should give all American children more equitable opportunities to thrive.
Closing the Opportunity Gap brings together top experts who offer evidence-based essays that paint a powerful picture of denied opportunities. They also describe sensible, research-based policy approaches to enhance opportunities. They highlight the discrepancies that exist in our society and in our public schools, focusing on how policy decisions and broader circumstances conspire to create the opportunity gap that leads inexorably to the outcome differences that have become so stark. The volume makes a compelling case that American educational policy must move beyond the conventional focus on achievement and opens a discussion about the common sense ways schools can and should give all American children more equitable opportunities to thrive.
Reviews / Votes
Schooling, at its best, is about creating new futures for our children. Closing the Opportunity Gap describes education as it is and provides a vision of education as it should be. The book provides a powerful critique of the educational and social policies and practices that exacerbate the widening economic disparity between rich and poor and the growing opportunity gap for too many of our nation's youth. The authors' analyses of educational inequity and their focus on opportunity to learn offer a much needed blueprint and a new social imagination about schooling in the U.S * Kris D. Gutierrez, Inaugural Provost's Chair and Professor of Learning Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder. * As policymakers and education leaders seek to pick up the pieces of a public education system tattered by No-Child-Left-Behind style reform, Carter and Welner's book brings clear-eyed analyses of failure and of future possibilities. In one highly readable volume, the nation's leading scholars provide evidence-based accounts of the root causes, everyday realities, and long-term consequences of the nation's weightiest educational problem-profound inequality in and out of school. And, most important, they offer comprehensive, insightful, and useful remedies. Those seeking new concepts and strategies for creating the public schools our diverse nation desperately needs and deserves need look no further than this astonishing book. * Jeannie Oakes, Director of Education and Scholarship, Ford Foundation *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
6 graphs, 6 tables
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
577 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-998299-8 (9780199982998)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Prudence L. Carter | Kevin G. Welner
Closing the Opportunity Gap
What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance
Book
05/2013
Oxford University Press Inc
€155.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Prudence L. Carter | Kevin G. Welner
Closing the Opportunity Gap
What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance
E-Book
04/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€23.99
Available for download
Prudence L. Carter | Kevin G. Welner
Closing the Opportunity Gap
What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance
E-Book
04/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€23.99
Available for download
Persons
Prudence Carter is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Dr. Carter's primary research agenda focuses on cultural explanations of academic and mobility differences among various racial and ethnic groups. Her most recent book is Stubborn Roots: Cultivating Cultural Flexibility and Equity in U.S. and South African Schools.
Kevin G. Welner is a professor of education policy in Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice program area at the University of Colorado Boulder, and he is the director of the National Education Policy Center. His work examines the use of research in policymaking, the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship, and the school change process associated with equity-focused reform.
Kevin G. Welner is a professor of education policy in Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice program area at the University of Colorado Boulder, and he is the director of the National Education Policy Center. His work examines the use of research in policymaking, the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship, and the school change process associated with equity-focused reform.
Content
Acknowledgements ; List of Contributors ; Chapter 1. Achievement Gaps Arise from Opportunity Gaps, Kevin G. Welner & Prudence L. Carter ; Chapter 2. Lack of Achievement or Loss of Opportunity?, Gloria Ladson-Billings ; Part One: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Children ; Chapter 3. Educationalizing the Welfare State and Privatizing Education: The Irony of Recent School Reform, Harvey Kantor & Robert Lowe ; Chapter 4. Going to the Roots: Race, Housing, and School Inequality Costs and Possible Solutions, Gary Orfield ; Chapter 5. Why Children from Lower Socioeconomic Classes, on Average, Have Lower Academic Achievement than Middle-Class Children, Richard Rothstein ; Part Two: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Schools ; Chapter 6. Inequality and School Resources: What it Will Take to Close the Opportunity Gap?, Linda Darling-Hammond ; Chapter 7. Achievement Gaps Start Early: Preschool Can Help, W. Steven Barnett & Cynthia E. Lamy ; Chapter 8. How Common Standards and Standardized Testing Widen the Opportunity Gap, Yong Zhao & Christopher Tienken ; Chapter 9. A More Perfect Union: Reconciling School Choice Policy with Equality of Opportunity Goals, Janelle Scott & Amy Stuart Wells ; Part Three: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Teachers ; Chapter 10. Student and School Cultures & the Opportunity Gap: Paying Attention and Engaging Better, Prudence L. Carter ; Chapter 11. Meeting the Needs of Language Minorities, Patricia Gandara ; Chapter 12. Tracking, Segregation, and the Opportunity Gap: What We Know and Why It Matters, Karolyn Tyson ; Chapter 13. Good Schools and Teachers for All Students: Dispelling Myths, Facing Evidence, and Pursuing the Right Strategies, Barnett Berry ; Part Four: Solutions/Conclusion ; Chapter 14. The Cumulative Costs of the Opportunity Gap, Clive Belfield & Hank Levin ; Chapter 15. Enhancing a Nation's Democracy through Equitable Schools, Michele Moses & John Rogers ; Chapter 16. Building Opportunities to Achieve, Prudence L. Carter & Kevin G. Welner ; Notes ; References ; Index