Conceptions of Inequality in the Era of Bush/Obama

In this chapter, I analyze current policies that are being advocated and/or enacted in order provide greater access to science for all students. Implicit in these policy-driven reforms are differing views of the sources of inequality. Standards-based reform assumes that inequality results from too much variability in the quality of the educational system, leading to a predictable abundance of opportunity in privileged communities and a lack of opportunity for underserved populations. Market-based reforms assume that inequality is due to a lack of competition that is needed to drive innovation and efficient utilization of resources. Finally, culturally-based notions of science learning assume that there are epistemological barriers to science learning and that effective reforms require leveraging community-based resources for learning science.