Closing the Opportunity Gap

Prudence Carter is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Dr. Carter's primary research agenda focuses on cultural explanations of academic and mobility differences among various racial and ethnic groups. Her most recent book is Stubborn Roots: Cultivating Cultural Flexibility and Equity in U.S. and South African Schools.Kevin G. Welner is a professor of education policy in Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice program area at the University of Colorado Boulder, and he is the director of the National Education Policy Center. His work examines the use of research in policymaking, the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship, and the school change process associated with equity-focused reform.

• Acknowledgements ; List of Contributors ; Chapter 1. Achievement Gaps Arise from Opportunity Gaps, Kevin G. Welner & Prudence L. Carter ; Chapter 2. Lack of Achievement or Loss of Opportunity?, Gloria Ladson-Billings ; Part One: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Children ; Chapter 3. Educationalizing the Welfare State and Privatizing Education: The Irony of Recent School Reform, Harvey Kantor & Robert Lowe ; Chapter 4. Going to the Roots: Race, Housing, and School Inequality Costs and Possible Solutions, Gary Orfield ; Chapter 5. Why Children from Lower Socioeconomic Classes, on Average, Have Lower Academic Achievement than Middle-Class Children, Richard Rothstein ; Part Two: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Schools ; Chapter 6. Inequality and School Resources: What it Will Take to Close the Opportunity Gap?, Linda Darling-Hammond ; Chapter 7. Achievement Gaps Start Early: Preschool Can Help, W. Steven Barnett & Cynthia E. Lamy ; Chapter 8. How Common Standards and Standardized Testing Widen the Opportunity Gap, Yong Zhao & Christopher Tienken ; Chapter 9. A More Perfect Union: Reconciling School Choice Policy with Equality of Opportunity Goals, Janelle Scott & Amy Stuart Wells ; Part Three: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Teachers ; Chapter 10. Student and School Cultures & the Opportunity Gap: Paying Attention and Engaging Better, Prudence L. Carter ; Chapter 11. Meeting the Needs of Language Minorities, Patricia Gandara ; Chapter 12. Tracking, Segregation, and the Opportunity Gap: What We Know and Why It Matters, Karolyn Tyson ; Chapter 13. Good Schools and Teachers for All Students: Dispelling Myths, Facing Evidence, and Pursuing the Right Strategies, Barnett Berry ; Part Four: Solutions/Conclusion ; Chapter 14. The Cumulative Costs of the Opportunity Gap, Clive Belfield & Hank Levin ; Chapter 15. Enhancing a Nation's Democracy through Equitable Schools, Michele Moses & John Rogers ; Chapter 16. Building Opportunities to Achieve, Prudence L. Carter & Kevin G. Welner ; Notes ; References ; Index

Schooling, at its best, is about creating new futures for our children. Closing the Opportunity Gap describes education as it is and provides a vision of education as it should be. The book provides a powerful critique of the educational and social policies and practices that exacerbate the widening economic disparity between rich and poor and the growing opportunity gap for too many of our nation's youth. The authors' analyses of educational inequity and their focus on opportunity to learn offer a much needed blueprint and a new social imagination about schooling in the U.S