Opportunity for All

Jennifer A. O'Day, Marshall S. Smith

Drawing on decades of research, policy, and practice, Jennifer A. O'Day and Marshall S. Smith show how strategies for pursuing educational quality and equal outcomes for all students can be linked, presenting both an ambitious idea the future of American education and a comprehensive theory of change for enacting that vision. The authors argue that systemic causes require systemic solutions. Analyzing the failures of past efforts to address and remedy systemic inequality, O'Day and Smith maintain that our current standards-based policy framework needs to be connected to a continuous improvement approach to build on and scale up successes and to address gaps in outcomes. They emphasize the value of focusing on a small set of high-leverage issues that are particularly salient for underserved students, and they call for deeper coordination between schools and community-based...