Inequality

Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America presents the results and interpretation of three years of research by Christopher Jencks and his colleagues into how economic and social inequality is produced in the United States, and sets that evidence against the assumptions of liberal educational reform. The book moves from equal opportunity to equal results, then examines inequality in the schools, covering access to schools and colleges, differences in expenditure, access to privileged schoolmates and placement in fast classes and college curriculums; inequality in cognitive skills and the heredity and environment question; inequality in educational attainment, including the effects of economic background, race, family background, academic credentials, school quality, segregation and curriculum placement; and then inequality in occupational status, in income and in job satisfaction. The authors conclude that educational reform cannot by itself bring about economic or social equality, that differences in school quality have little effect on achievement or on later economic success, and that genes and measured intelligence have relatively little effect on economic success either. Their central conclusion is that even if every child received an equally good education, adult society would hardly be more equal than it is now.

Written from the public record for the book.

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People

• Arthur Jensen