President Obama’s remarks on inequality, stoking populist anger at “the rich,” suggest that the theme for his reelection bid will be not hope and change but focus on reducing class disparity with government help. But this effort isn’t limited to economics; it is playing out in our nation’s schools as well.

All children in a free nation have a moral claim to attend schools that will help them discover and develop their gifts. And while difficult choices must always be made, we should be wary of shaping schools in ways that explicitly favor some of our children while shortchanging others.

Harvard Graduate School of Education's Meira Levinson argues that recovering the civic purposes of public schools will take more than tweaking their curricula. Drawing on political theory, empirical research and her own experience from teaching at an all-black middle school in Atlanta, Levinson calls on schools to remake civic education.

Have efforts to cultivate "vocational" citizenship skills failed to satisfy the broader obligation of schools to cultivate the next generation of citizens and civic leaders?

Under Title I--the major provision of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act--the federal government has provided more than $200 billion to schools with children from low-income familes. The goal of this program, reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act, is to raise the achievement of children...

The Title I program has had no systematic, positive effect on student achievement, and it does not contribute significantly to closing the achievement gap for poor and minority students.

This bookexamines the effects on achievement of the largest federal program of financial aid to schools, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.