Escaping the shadow of "excellence": A preview of my argument for revisiting equity concerns in the context of standards-based reform

Multicultural Education, Fall 2000 by Fritzberg, Gregory J

A Preview of My argument for Revisiting Equity concerns in the Context of Standards-Based Reform

If education be equally diffused, it will draw property after it, by the strongest of all attractions; for such a thing never did happen, as that an intelligent and practical body of men should be permanently poor. Property and labor, in different classes, are essentially antagonistic; but property and labor, in the same class, are essentially fraternal.... Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of menthe balance-wheel of the social machinery.

-Horace Mann, 1849

The Importance of Equality of Educational Opportunity in American Life

I am pleased to have this opportunity to share with readers of Multicultural Education the central concerns, questions, and discoveries that led to my recent book, In the Shadow of "Excellence": Recovering a Vision of Educational Opportunity For All (1999). Since the concept of equity is obviously of prominent concern in the field of multicultural education, this is a highly appropriate venue to address the related policy concept of equality of educational opportunity. Given the historic correlation between educational attainment and occupational opportunities, equal educational opportunity is the logical and operational proxy for the more general ideal of equal occupational opportunity. As a result, the derivative concept takes on the quintessential American passion for the ideal of equal "life chances" for all, and it is our role as educators to make equality of educational opportunity a reality as opposed to a mere slogan.

But before we sign on to such a task, we must understand more clearly what equal educational opportunity actually means and requires, which will be the aim of the next section. I will then assess the status of equality of educational opportunity in the context of current standardsbased reform efforts, commonly known as the "excellence movement," and conclude with some final remarks on the questions that drive the book. My hope is that after reading this piece readers will engage the book itself for a fuller picture of the argument, an argument which bears significant attention given the paucity of attention that equity concerns have received in the last two decades of educational reform.

The Story of Equality of Educational Opportunity in American Schooling

As citizens of a liberal and meritocratic state, Americans have always perceived public education as a ladder which the ablest children of all backgrounds can climb toward occupational and economic success. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of replacing the existing aristocracy of inherited privilege with a "natural aristocracy" of talent (letter to John Adams; anthologized in Barber & Battistoni, 1993, p. 41). In his "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge in the State of Virginia," Jefferson outlined a plan that called for three years of elementary education for all children and scholarships to grammar schools, and eventually the University of Virginia, to the most promising workingclass boys.

Horace Mann and Lyndon Johnson conceived of the purpose of education in similar terms. Mann, as evidenced in the quotation that frames this article, saw education as the single most powerful tool with which to erase rigid class distinctions. Johnson also saw education as the remedy for socioeconomic inequality, initiating compensatory programs like Head Start, Chapter One, and Upward Bound. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson included blacks and native Americans in his vision of equalizing educational opportunity. He recognized that improving education for minority children was one of the nation's principal unfinished tasks (Kantor & Lowe, 1995).

Ironically, it was Johnson's faith in education that set in motion a chain of events that sobered Americans' confidence in public education as the "great equalizer." Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964 called for a survey and report on "the lack of availability of equal educational opportunities for individuals by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin" in public education (quoted in Aaron,1978, p. 75). The findings of the Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey (1966), constructed by a team led by James Coleman, surprised everyone, including Coleman himself. In short, traditional measures of school quality-instructional facilities, curriculum materials, and teacher pay-were not as unequal across majority black and majority white schools as had been assumed, and thus did not sufficiently explain significant achievement differences between the two groups.

The Coleman Report, and Christopher Jencks' (et al.) Inequality (1972) and the Rand Corporation's How Effective is Schooling? (1972) after it, concluded that the family backgrounds of students-a variable that was designed to capture racial, economic, cultural, and community impacts on the cognitive development of children-exercised a far greater influence on children's scholastic achievement than their schooling experiences. The Rand study concluded by asking "whether our educational problems are, in fact, school problems. The most profitable line of attack on educational problems may not, after all, be through the schools" (Averch et al., 1972, p. vii). In anecdotal reference to a quip that a Harvard scholar reportedly made to a colleague upon reviewing the Coleman Report, these studies have come to be known collectively as the "schools don't make a difference" research.