Beyond affirmative action: The shame of education and widening inequality — Class 13

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions. Yet colleges can continue to give preference to “legacies?” Since non-white students were barred from most colleges for more than 200 years, legacy students are by definition most likely white.

Inequalities in education have received a great deal of attention in recent years — but that attention rarely deals with the underlying problem or what must be done to reverse those inequalities. That’s where today’s lecture comes in. Just click on the link below, and you’re back in my class:

The questions I’ll be addressing are: What are the positions in the major debate over how to fix our public schools? What reforms are necessary in early education and K-12 education to address inequality? Should it be a national goal that every child has access to higher education? How should higher education be organized to reduce inequality?

Recommended reading (just click on the link):

• Danielle Paquette, “Why your children’s day care may determine how wealthy they become,” The Washington Post, April 24, 2017

• Rucker Johnson and Sean Tanner, “Money and Freedom: The Impact of California’s School Finance Reform,” Learning Policy Institute, February 2018

• Robert Reich, “How Selective Colleges Heighten Inequality,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2000

• Nikole Hannah-Jones, “How School Segregation Divides Ferguson — and the United States,” The New York Times, December 19, 2014