While the achievement gap has dominated policy discussions over the past two decades, relatively little attention has been paid to a gap even more at odds with American ideals: the opportunity gap. Opportunity and achievement, while inextricably connected, are very different goals. Every American will not go to college, but every American should be given a fair chance to be prepared for college. In communities across the U.S., children lack the crucial resources and opportunities, inside and outside of schools that they need if they are to reach their potential.
Closing the Opportunity Gap offers accessible, research-based essays written by top experts who highlight the discrepancies that exist in our public schools, focusing on how policy decisions and life circumstances conspire to create the "opportunity gap" that leads inexorably to stark achievement gaps. They also describe sensible policies grounded in evidence that can restore and enhance opportunities. Moving beyond conventional academic discourse, Closing the Opportunity Gap will spark vital new conversations about what schools, parents, educators, and policymakers can and should do to give all children a fair chance to thrive.

Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Chapter 1. Achievement Gaps Arise from Opportunity Gaps, Kevin G. Welner & Prudence L. Carter
Chapter 2. Lack of Achievement or Loss of Opportunity?, Gloria Ladson-Billings
Part One: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Children
Chapter 3. Educationalizing the Welfare State and Privatizing Education: The Irony of Recent School Reform, Harvey Kantor & Robert Lowe
Chapter 4. Going to the Roots: Race, Housing, and School Inequality Costs and Possible Solutions, Gary Orfield
Chapter 5. Why Children from Lower Socioeconomic Classes, on Average, Have Lower Academic Achievement than Middle-Class Children, Richard Rothstein
Part Two: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Schools
Chapter 6. Inequality and School Resources: What it Will Take to Close the Opportunity Gap?, Linda Darling-Hammond
Chapter 7. Achievement Gaps Start Early: Preschool Can Help, W. Steven Barnett & Cynthia E. Lamy
Chapter 8. How Common Standards and Standardized Testing Widen the Opportunity Gap, Yong Zhao & Christopher Tienken
Chapter 9. A More Perfect Union: Reconciling School Choice Policy with Equality of Opportunity Goals, Janelle Scott & Amy Stuart Wells
Part Three: Overcoming the Obstacles We Create for Teachers
Chapter 10. Student and School Cultures & the Opportunity Gap: Paying Attention and Engaging Better, Prudence L. Carter
Chapter 11. Meeting the Needs of Language Minorities, Patricia Gándara
Chapter 12. Tracking, Segregation, and the Opportunity Gap: What We Know and Why It Matters, Karolyn Tyson
Chapter 13. Good Schools and Teachers for All Students: Dispelling Myths, Facing Evidence, and Pursuing the Right Strategies, Barnett Berry
Part Four: Solutions/Conclusion
Chapter 14. The Cumulative Costs of the Opportunity Gap, Clive Belfield & Hank Levin
Chapter 15. Enhancing a Nation's Democracy through Equitable Schools, Michele Moses & John Rogers
Chapter 16. Building Opportunities to Achieve, Prudence L. Carter & Kevin G. Welner
Notes
References
Index

Prudence L. Carter is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University.
Kevin G. Welner is Professor of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.