Volume 20, Number 8 · May 17, 1973
Inequality and Education
By Christopher Lasch
Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America
by Christopher Jencks. and others
Basic Books, 399 pp., $12.50
Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools
by Michael B. Katz
Praeger, 153 pp., $5.95
The Great School Legend: A Revisionist Interpretation of American Public Education
by Colin Greer
Basic Books, 206 pp., $7.45
Education and the Rise of the Corporate State
by Joel H. Spring
Beacon, 198 pp., $7.95
The most important finding of Christopher Jencks's much discussed study can be stated simply. There is little correlation between income and the quality of schooling, and school reform can no longer be regarded, therefore, as an effective means of equalizing income. To put the matter more broadly, equalizing opportunity will not guarantee equal results. If we wish to reduce inequality, we should adopt policies designed to equalize income instead of attempting to equalize opportunity in education, the goal of so much liberal reform in recent years.
Review, 6804 words
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