In a New Republic review of our volume, Whither Opportunty? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, Richard D. Kahlenberg writes that its "stunning" research challenges both liberal and conservative assumptions about the best way to reform education and guarantee equal opportunity:

Greg Duncan of U.C. Irvine and Richard Murnane of Harvard have assembled a large group of top-notch researchers to produce a massive volume—551 pages with small type and narrow margins. If long and dense, the book’s research is stunning, and may help change the national conversation in education. The authors explode two myths that have dominated American education discourse for a generation: that inequalities are rooted in race, and that a tough “no excuses” model can vanquish the effects of poverty and economic school segregation. [...]

Whither Opportunity? is a powerful statement from some of the best scholars in the country that popular bipartisan slogans like “no excuses” are backed by little to no research. The nature of educational inequality is shifting, from race to class, and if we want to make a difference in schools, we cannot ignore what goes on outside them.

Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, nicely summarizes some of the main findings from the book, including:

•The test score and college graduation gaps between black and white are slowly shrinking while the gaps between rich and poor are roughly twice as large as fifty years ago.

• Children of wealthy families have increased their college graduation rates by 18 percentage points, while those from poor families have increased just 4 percentage points, so that the students of wealthy families are now six times as likely to graduate (54 percent versus 9 percent.)

• Because of growing economic segregation, the authors find, "a child from a poor family is two to four times as likely as a child from an affluent family to have classmates in both elementary and high school with low skills and with behavioral problems."

Read the full review here.