is not promising regarding the country's commitment to these ideals.
Generally, school reform in the United States has followed a pattern. Pressure for access and inclusion by minority groups and women has been gradually accommodated by increasing access to established levels of schooling. However, such access has been paralleled by the creation by those who advocate a meritocracy of new layers of educational access that only the middle-classes could widely attain (Bastian, Fruchter, Gittell, Greer, & Haskins, et. al, 1986, p. 36). Through this process, minority groups have become universalized and devalued. In addition, sharp differentials have been maintained in the quality of individual schools and the vocational tracks to which children are assigned on the basis of their class, ethnicity, race, sex, physical and cultural attributes (Bastian et. al, 1986, pp. 36-37). Public education in the United States has never transcended social or economic stratification; it has merely reproduced it (Bastian et. al, 1986, p. 37).
With the persistence of racism, poverty, unemployment, chronic crisis, and inequality in education, many people have found it difficult to reconcile their daily realities with the publicized egalitarianism that characterizes the rhetoric of our nation's leaders (Gollnick & Chinn, 1990, p. 25). Traditionally, we have been led to believe that education would help our children to overcome the inequalities that existed in society and governed our lives (Gollnick & Chinn, 1990, p. 27). However, Meier, Stewart and England argue that equal educational opportunity is still not a reality in the United States (1989, p. 137). They conducted a study from which they argued the education available to black students is not the same as the education available to white students. Instead of integrated education with equal-status individuals learning in multiracial environments, education continues to be segregated to pro...