amilies lost their welfare functions, the training of children became important to the community as a whole, which wanted to ensure that they could support themselves as adults (Coleman, 1990, pp. 17-19).
Just as many 19th Century families could not afford to let their children attend school beyond a relatively early age, present economic realities continue to affect how far an individual continues his or her education. Regardless, the role of schools in providing equality of opportunity is a passive one. They simply make available to a child a curriculum which might not otherwise be available; it is up to the child and his family to use this "opportunity." The schools' role became less passive with the advent of compulsory education, but no individual is required to even finish their secondary education (Coleman, 1990, pp. 19-22).
What is meant by equal educational opportunity?
Does equality in this context mean equality of school resources (equality of inputs) or equality in the results of schooling (equality of outputs)? Equality of outputs is impossible to achieve because of the unequal influences in the environments of different children, particularly with regard to families. If equality of inputs is used as the definition, then there are two problems. First, such equality would exist if the total school resources provided to each child were minimal. Second, some children (such as handicapped children) would require more input school resources if any kind of reasonable results were to be achieved (Coleman, 1990, pp. 63-64).
Because of the problems with the above definitions, a definition might be inferred from court decisions. In Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483 (1954)), the U.S. Supreme Court focused on output, although it did not go so far as to require full equality in output. The Court seemed to imply that equality meant a public educational system which is sufficiently effective to prevent, for no...