Them that’s got? How school partnerships can perpetuate inequalities 

I remember the moment when I became certain that my career would be devoted to improving educational opportunities and outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I was 16 years old at a summer college-preparation program reading Jonathan Kozol’s then-recently published book, Savage Inequalities. Every chapter profiled obvious, widespread, and persistent disparities among schools, leaving me outraged and haunted. About one school in the Bronx, Kozol wrote, “The library is a tiny, windowless and claustrophobic room [with] approximately 700 books . . . The school, I am told, has 26 computers for its 1,300 children. There is one small gym . . .  recess, however, is not possible because there is no playground . . . The school, I am told, is 90% black and Hispanic . . . in a 6th grade social studies class the walls are bare of words or decorations” (Kozol, 1992, p. 87).  

While some have argued that resources have small and inconsistent effects on student outcomes, they are usually referring to “real resources,” typically measured in dollars, with the outcome measured as test-score performance (Hanushek, 1997). When a broader class of resources and outcomes are considered — along with how monetary resources are actually spent — their importance for fostering equal educational opportunities seems undeniable (Ouchi, 2003). Yet, in the absence of a revolutionary change in structural inequalities that determine school resources — such as funding formulas based largely on property tax values — what options do principals or district administrators have for providing more equal educational opportunities?