Restoring Opportunity
At a time of spiraling income inequality, can our schools significantly improve the life chances of low-income children? Yes, conclude authors Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane. Restoring Opportunity lays out a meticulously researched case for how targeted interventions and support can significantly level the playing field between low-income children and their more fortunate peers. The alternative: if educational inequality is allowed to continue in our schools, many students are at risk of losing their opportunity for upward economic mobility that has been a defining feature of America. LEARN MORE
In the Media
…economic forces of technology and globalization are driving a wedge between winners and losers in the U.S. economy and making it tough for schools to help children from low-income families to get the skills they need to compete.
—Wall Street Journal
Greg J. Duncan, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine, has spent more than 30 years investigating the impact of poverty on children’s development. His research focuses primarily on issues of income distribution, poverty and child well-being. Trained as an economist, Duncan has always taken an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the complex dynamics of child and youth development, drawing on insights from the fields of economics, psychology, sociology, neuroscience and epidemiology.Read more
Richard J. Murnane is the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In Restoring Opportunity, he and Professor Greg Duncan examine how the growth in family income inequality in the U.S. has affected educational opportunities for children from low-income families and identify the effectiveness of alternative strategies for improving life chances for these children.Read more