Equal Educational Opportunity: Can We Get There From Here?

• In Event: Charting Reform, Achieving Equity in a Diverse Nation

Abstract

Purpose:
In recent decades, legislatures and courts have produced a body of law that shapes our expectations about what constitutes equal educational opportunity (Salomone, 1986). The purpose of this paper is to explore how conceptions and realizations of the provision of equal educational opportunities have evolved and to outline the current state of legal and legislative efforts to achieve the goal in American public schools. We argue that these efforts have fallen short due in part to both an extreme reliance on education to correct social inequalities and a conceptualization of education as mainly an individual, rather than collective, good.

Perspective, Methods, and Data Sources:
Framing our analysis in terms of Howe’s (1992) distinction between “bare opportunities” and “opportunities worth wanting” (p. 460), we use a multidisciplinary, critical perspective to examine judicial decisions, legislative policies, philosophical texts, and education research to better understand the legal, political, and educational issues that have arisen since Brown v. Board of Education. We identified the sources for this paper through ancestral searches of seminal works, electronic searches of educational databases and journals, reviews of think tank publications and advocacy positions, and consultation with scholars in the field.

Conclusions and Significance:
What constitutes equal educational opportunity has evolved over time. Researchers, judges, policymakers, and advocates have shifted their focus from equal access and equal treatments to equal outcomes and equal benefits (Grubb, 2007). This process of defining and redefining equality of educational opportunity has not followed a linear path, as competing conceptions of desirable outcomes and political strategies have shaped and reshaped our understanding of what is just and how to achieve it (Cohen & Moffitt, 2009; Minow, 2010). We conclude that while the body of litigation and legislation aimed at increasing equality of educational opportunity has afforded students of this nation more than “bare opportunities” (Howe, 1992, p. 460), it has not yet afforded them “opportunities worth wanting” (Howe, 1992, p. 460). Legal efforts have stalled after increasing students’ access to educational resources, while legislative efforts have applied insufficient policy tools to educational reforms (Cohen & Moffitt, 2009).

Contributing to these stalled and ineffective efforts are two overlapping challenges to social and education policy. One is an extreme reliance on public education, rather than other societal institutions, to serve as the vehicle for addressing social inequities in the United States (Kanter & Lowe, 2006). From this perspective, policies toward political, social, and economic justice stem not from a social contract but rather from an overburdened educational contract. The second is insufficient attention to the collective outcomes of education as a counterbalance to individual interests (Labaree, 1997). This perspective shifts the policy debate from addressing the collective goods that can be achieved through greater equality of educational opportunity to the promotion of individual rights. We argue that understanding these challenges, their history, and their likely trajectory is essential if we wish to achieve a just and equitable education system.

Authors

• Robert G. Croninger, University of Maryland - College Park

• Kathleen Mulvaney Hoyer, University of Maryland - College Park