Income inequality has soared in the United States over the past half century. Has educational inequality increased alongside, in lockstep?
Of course, say public intellectuals from across the political spectrum. As Richard Rothstein of the liberal Economic Policy Institute puts it: “Incomes have become more unequally distributed in the United States in the last generation, and this inequality contributes to the academic achievement gap.” Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, citing research by Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon, says, “Rich Americans and poor Americans are living, learning, and raising children in increasingly separate and unequal worlds.” Another well-known political scientist, Charles Murray, argues that “the United States is stuck with a large and growing lower class that is able to care for itself only sporadically and inconsistently. . . . The new upper class has continued to prosper as the dollar value of the talents they bring to the economy has continued to grow.”
These analysts have good reason to express concern. National competitiveness is at stake, as education advocates have argued since the Soviet Sputnik launch inspired the National Defense Education Act of 1958. Economic productivity and growth are greater in countries where students perform better in math, reading, and science than in those that do not provide their youth the same opportunities to learn (see “Education and Economic Growth,” research, Spring 2008). And while some might see income inequality as the result of adult life choices about matters such as how hard to work or where to live, educational inequality seems unfair, because the economic status of a child is outside the child’s own control. It is an inequality of opportunity that runs counter to the American dream.
[For more on this story by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, Laura M. Talpey and Ludger Woessmann, go to https://www.educationnext.org/...n=cb_bureau_national]
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