Soaring Systems

High Flyers All Have Equitable Funding, Shared Curriculum, and Quality Teaching

by Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she is codirector of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the founding director of the School Redesign Network. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education. From Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education, New York: Teachers College Press. 

Now more than ever, high-quality education for all is a public good that is essential for the good of the public. As the fate of individuals and nations is increasingly interdependent, the quest for access to an equitable, empowering education for all people has become a critical issue for the American nation as a whole. No society can thrive in a technological, knowledge-based economy by depriving large segments of its population of learning. But at a time when three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require post- secondary education, just over one-third of our young people receive a college degree.

 Meanwhile, in many European and Asian nations, more than half of young people are becoming col- lege graduates. At a time when high school dropouts are unlikely to secure any job at all, our high school graduation rate—stuck at about 70 percent—has dropped from first in the world to the bot- tom half of industrialized nations. At a time when children of color comprise a majority in most urban districts, and will be the major- ity in the nation as a whole by 2025, we face pernicious achieve- ment gaps that fuel inequality, shortchanging our young people and our nation.

Recent analyses of data prepared for school equity cases in more than 20 states have found that on every tangible measure—from qualified teachers and reasonable class sizes, to adequate text- books, computers, facilities, and curriculum offerings—schools serving large numbers of students of color have significantly fewer resources than schools serving more affluent, white students.  Many such schools are so severely overcrowded that they run a multitrack schedule with a shortened school day and school year, lack basic textbooks and materials, do not offer the courses students would need to be eligible for college, and are staffed by a parade of untrained, inexperienced, and temporary teachers.

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