The U.S. Schooling Dilemma: Diversity, Inequality, and Democratic Values

This chapter focuses on inequalities that shape students’ lives. It provides a numerical breakdown that describes today’s students and the relationship between students’ diverse characteristics and their educational experiences and outcomes. Most people in the United States, and certainly all teachers, have heard about the nation’s racial achievement gap. Far fewer have heard about the opportunity gap. And yet, as we show in what follows, persistent patterns of unequal conditions, resources, and opportunities in and outside of school underlie the gaps, or disparities, in students’ achievement.