Introduces a collection of essays by four educators who have dealt extensively with issues of race and its various manifestations. The four essays address fundamental issues about how race as a social reality has shaped, and continues to shape, the lives of people in the United States. Through the lenses of different academic disciplines, the…

Discussion of visual literacy, visual cognition, visual thinking and learning, and visual knowledge focuses on women and gender differences. Topics addressed include educational equality and the visual, including equality versus difference; women and mass culture; difference and the design of visual instruction; and feminist education and the…

The first-person accounts of over 400 middle school students from five diverse schools suggest that three decades of gender equity efforts have fallen far short of their goals. Contrary to the backlash argument that girls are now the advantaged sex, or the perceptions of many adults that both girls and boys are treated fairly in school today,…

To stress one of this nation's greatest strengths--its ability to form groups or partnerships to solve problems, such as providing quality education to rural America--academic year 1983-84 was proclaimed "National Year of Partnerships in Education." The Intra-Agency Committee on Rural Education, composed of representatives of the 14…

A common theme in the current spate of reports advocating reform of American schools has been the need for attaining the twin goals of "equity" and "excellence." Yet there is widespread disagreement, not only on the relationship of quality and equality, but on the acceptable meanings of these terms as well. James Coleman, (1969) in "The Concept of…

The Equality of Educational Opportunity (EEO) Survey of 1966 shifted attention to outcomes in assessing whether opportunity has been equal. There is a second step to be taken: less attention to equality, more to excellence. There are two flaws in the equality concept in a racial context. One is its nearness of meaning to similarity or identity.…

The Office of Desegregation of the Little Rock, Arkansas, Public School District was given the responsibility for developing an instrument to evaluate the implementation of educational equity in the district pursuant to federal court desegregation mandates. Office of Desegregation personnel invited in Center for Academic Excellence staff of the…

The contemporary interest in the pursuit of excellence in education is derived from a long tradition of efforts to provide special schooling defined as excellent. In the current movement, excellence, though ambiguously defined and political in nature, denotes a necessary separation among people and in its subtle trappings of class, contains…

Equity in knowledge production and utilization calls for a bold approach with a system of planned intervention for educational change for the disadvantaged. Such an attempt should be based on a two-way flow of information model, and it might involve the training of persons indigenous to each group in the use of education products, and the…

In this speech the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice discusses the impact of racial and sex discrimination on the nation. The author reflects on the high costs of discrimination, financially and socially, in terms of riot damage, underutilization of the work force, crime, and poor education. In…

Using the resources of the Women's Educational Equity Communications Network (WEECN), the authors addressed two questions: (1) What are the topics that have been extensively researched, and (2) What are the topics most frequently requested by those using information on women's educational equity? Some initial findings of this study are presented…

A well-rounded program of extramural opportunities for females which provides experience between the intramural model and the existing male intercollegiate models is presently nonexistent. Five possible alternatives to guide the future of athletics are suggested: (a) women could demand access to the existing model of male athletics; (b) women…

Four intermediate district models presented at a Massachusetts conference on organization and collaboration suggest a way that many otherwise unavailable services can be provided to local districts. These services range from programs in special and vocational education to computer networks and administrative services. Known by a variety of titles,…

American higher education in this century has been almost schizophrenic in its development. As money and knowledge began to spread more distributively across the population, the population began to demand for its children a more equitable access into the world of the more privileged. Education and privilege were highly correlated. Greater access…

The most important principle in Federal education policy is equal access to a good education for every young person, irrespective of race, faith, family circumstance, cultural background, age, or sex, and irrespective of any physical or mental handicap. The Office of Education is doing many things to help the States and local school districts…