It’s beyond banal now to notice that the United States is coming apart. It’s Unwinding, warns author George Packer. It’s falling deeper into its Big Sort, says journalist Bill Bishop. Income and asset inequalities are manifesting into geographic inequities — some regions of the country are taking off while others are floundering.
U.S. schools are no different. They participate — and are embedded — in myriad American injustices. Most education reformers have a story about when this hit them, when they first realized how U.S. schools reinforce privileges of race, wealth, gender, etc. Naturally, most education reform starts there, with those big, systemic inequities. If American public schools are perpetuating opportunity and achievement gaps, presumably we need to shift structures around them — we need more equitable funding, distribution of quality teachers, access to academic rigor, and so on and so forth. If U.S. schools are complicit in structural inequity, then the structures need to change...