Asking the Right Question

Abstract

The decade of the 1980s was a period of intense educational reform, with emphasis on equalized funding, higher standards, and testing. Inadequate results from these reforms have prompted educators to reach deeper into the mechanisms that produce educational inequality, focusing on the goals of program equity and program adequacy. However, this strategy contains the misconception that educational equality may be achieved solely by focusing on what goes on within schools. Output goals for schools must be tied to explicit programs and standards to create a level playing field by raising up the schools serving the poor and knocking down barriers that stratify educational opportunity by race and class.