My Take on Duncan and Murnane's New Book: "Restoring Opportunity"
by Frederick M. Hess • Jan 22, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Three years ago, UC-Irvine's Greg Duncan and Harvard's Dick Murnane published a terrific edited volume titledWhither Opportunity? That volume summarized a slew of evidence on trends in educational outcomes and on how families, schools, and all the rest shape life outcomes for kids. Anyway, that's the backdrop for Duncan and Murnane's new book, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education, which has just been published by my good friends at Harvard Education Press. (Full disclosure: I edited the "Innovations" series for HEP).
Their timing is auspicious, given that President Obama has recently initiated a national discussion about economic inequality. Those enmeshed in debates will benefit from this concise survey of where things stand, how we've gotten here, and what schools can help do about it.
If you haven't read the prior book, no worries. As Murnane and Duncan explain, they were concerned that the research bent of the first book may have turned off folks who weren't academics or data junkies. They also note that the first book focused on diagnosis rather than prescription. This short volume (144 pages of text) is all about recommending policies and prescriptions for educators, advocates, and public officials.
Duncan and Murnane argue that the answer is not more money, test-based accountability, revamping district
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