The achievement gap looms large in the current era of high-stakes testing and accountability. Yet questions persist: Has the accountability movement-and attendant discussions on the achievement gap-focused attention on the true sources of educational failure in American schools? Do we need to look beyond classrooms and schools for credible accounts of disparities in educational outcomes?

This book aims to shift attention from the current overwhelming emphasis on schools in discussions of the achievement gap to more fundamental questions about social and educational opportunity. Together its essays reintroduce the overlooked central issue in educational inequity: the lack of opportunity that many social groups face in our common quest for educational attainment. In a series of wide-ranging and carefully nuanced essays, The Opportunity Gap casts much-needed light on the vexed relationship between society and education-and on the crucial, persistent role that education plays in addressing social ills.