What Works in Education
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As Linda Darling-Hammond wrote in her book, The Flat World and Education:
How Policy Can Matter
…These declines are not inevitable. We have made strong headway on educational achievement in the past and can do so again. At this moment in history, it is easy to forget that during the years following Brown v. Board vs Education, when desegregation and school finance reform efforts were launched, and when the Great Society’s War on Poverty increased investments in urban and poor rural schools, substantial gains were made in equalizing both educational inputs and outcomes. Gaps in school spending, access to qualified teachers, and access to higher education were smaller in the mid- to late 1970s than they had been before and, in many states, than they have been since.
Driven by the belief that equal educational opportunity was a national priority, the Elementary and Secondary