ABSTRACT
Well into the present century Americans believed schooling was the chief remedy for inequalities in social and economic opportunity. Over the last three decades, however, leaders and laypersons alike have become increasingly disturbed by the persistent pattern of low school achievement and underachievement among children in families of low income and in some minority communities. Dropout rates have gone down in recent years in the nation as a whole and test scores of minority youngsters relative to whites have improved somewhat (see Bracey, 1991), but these advances are over-shadowed by the problems that remain. In fact, a sense of crisis continues, especially in central city school systems with largely minority and poverty level enrolments where dropout rates of the order of 50 per cent are common (Hammack, 1986).
