ABSTRACT
Not surprisingly, given the dramatic and long-standing associations, there is a range of explanations for why schools and school systems seem to be relatively powerless to equalize the outcomes for children from different groups, either at the beginning or over the course of life at school. These range from explanations that argue schools are inherently unable to make much of a difference to those that argue we need more and better schooling. These positions are not as fixed as they are presented here and in certain combinations are not mutually exclusive. Also, I have deliberately put some explanations together that ordinarily belong in different disciplines and have different approaches. Paradoxically, creating more generic types of explanations is a means of being more precise about what the evidence suggests about the limitations of schools. The liberties I have taken help set up the core distinctions about where the sources of limitations might actually lie.
