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Understanding Equal Educational Opportunity

reviewed by Nicholas C. Burbules

Title: Understanding Equal Educational Opportunity
Author(s): Kenneth R. Howe
Publisher: Teachers College Press, New York
ISBN: 080773599X, Pages: , Year: 1997
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One must admire the courage of a project like Kenneth Howe's in Understanding Equal Educational Opportunity. At a time when the United States has seen a series of compromises and erosions in the redistributive policies of the liberal welfare state, and a widespread abandonment of the social ideal of economic, political, and educational equality, Professor Howe has given us a well-argued reconception of the ideal of equal educational opportunity and has given this conception its strongest defense as requiring substantive equalization of certain educational outcomes. This emphasis flies in the face of a society that has become complacent about the profound inequalities of educational resources and facilities that exist between poor and wealthy, inner city and suburban, black and white, and rural and metropolitan school systems. Professor Howe's refusal to join in the chorus of "realistic" (read fatalistic) reformers, who have implicitly accepted that many school children will either drop out or leave school with barely adequate skills, must be admired. Professor Howe's book is a call...