ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book focuses on Southern and urban schools which are disturbing harbingers about the growing weight being shouldered by US public education: the rise in segregation and a new majority in public school, students living in poverty. These in-school patterns reflect similar conditions of inequity in the wider society. Children are impacted directly and indirectly by the destiny of their births-in their homes, their communities, and their schools. Yet, most education policies and advocates of those policies represent the belief that in-school-only reform, calling for 'no excuses' from teachers and schools, as well as 'grit' from students-is the sole workable option. Poverty is surely the most widespread and important example of scarcity, explain Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. The accountability era of in-school-only education reform is built on the premise that students and teachers lack motivation.
