Equality, Curriculum, and the Decline of the Academic Ideal: Detroit, 1930-68

Abstract

The question of whether high school students should follow a uniform academic program or choose from options in a differentiated curriculum has reemerged in the 1980s as one of the most crucial issues facing American public education. In its latest incarnation, brought to life by the publication of A Nation at Risk and subsequent proposals and manifestos, the debate has been framed as one between educational excellence, on the one hand, and equality of educational opportunity, on the other. In response to increasing demands for excellence throughout the 1980s, many states and local districts adopted minimum academic competency exams for high school graduation or for passing from the eighth grade into high school, and set or raised the minimum level of academic performance required for participating in extracurricular activities.' Yet many of these efforts were met with a chorus of criticism from educators, liberal politicians, and minority leaders who argued that such changes would have a disproportionate effect on black and Hispanic youths, blocking their participation in athletics and other activities, raising their already high dropout rates, and in countless other ways stunting their aspirations for entry into the academic mainstream. These criticisms echoed a very old idea in American education, a definition of equal educational opportunity, which we believe has done immeasurable damage over the years to the educational experience of American youth in general, and African American youth in particular. This idea holds that the high school must do everything it can to keep everyone in school until graduation-even if this means keeping graduation requirements low and in reach of all; developing courses that