By the end of the nineteenth century, most educational reforms were about trying to make “separate but equal” schools for rich and poor work well. The results of these efforts have been discouraging. New schools and institutions looked at ways to integrate public school by economic status through public school choice. At the higher education level, they examined ways to open the doors of selective and non-selective institutions to students of modest means that prepared students for their professions. Issues like meritocracy, the reduction of public control, and the development of standardized tests were of a major concern in this chapter.
Meritocracy was established in schools as a social system that gave opportunities and advantages to people on the basis of their abilities and merit rather than their economic wealth or power. One of the issues with this concept was that once a person is put into their position due to their merit, then wouldn’t there still be some sort of confining wall separating people due to the higher or lower status the person holds. This is similar to the ideology behind standardized tests where students are all given the same test bearing in mind that all the students are getting the same quality education. The problem is that there are multiple reasons as to why a student doesn’t do well on a standardized test including the fact that not all instructors are good teachers and that not all students are great test takers. So here we have the notion of meritocracy and standardized tests still socially confining people in society. Is it possible for people to have equal opportunities? Or has our previous problems in history produced by inequality continue to affect us forever?
