Public schools are essential to make the American dream work, but schools are also the arena in which many Americans first fail. Failure there almost cer-tainly guarantees failure from then on. In the dream, failure results from lack of individual merit and effort; in reality, failure in school too closely tracks structures of racial and class inequality. Schools too often reinforce rather than contend against the intergenerational paradox at the heart of the American dream. That is understandable but not acceptable.

Desegregation enhanced the long-term life chances of many African American students and rarely hurt white students, but the movement to complete or maintain it has largely been over for 2 5 years. School finance reform broadens schooling opportunities for poor children with-out harming those who are better off, but equity in funding has depended mostly on the intervention of the courts.

In the United States, class is connected with race and immigration; the poor are disproportionately African Americans or recent immigrants, especially from Latin America. Legal racial discrimination was abolished in American schooling during the last half century (an amazing ac-complishment in itself), but prejudice and racial hierarchy remain, and racial or ethnic inequities reinforce class disparities

Unlike schooling in every other major industrialized country, public educaoo~ in this country is democratic and deeply local. Despite the rhetoric of presi-d . I d'd . . th 1· . that enua can 1 ates, it 1s not e federal government but states and loca 1oes carry most of the burden of public education.

The paradox stems from the fact that the success of one generation depends at least partly on the success of their parents or guardians. People who succeed get to keep the fruits of their labor and use them as they see fit; if they buy a home in a place where the schools are better, or use their superior resources to make the schools in their neighborhood better, their chil-dren will have a head start and other children will fall behind through no fault of their own. The paradox lies in the fact that schools are supposed to equal-ize opportunities across generations and to create democratic citizens out of each generation, but people naturally wish to give their own children an ad-vantage in attaining wealth or power, and some can do it. When they do, every-one does not start equally, politically or economically. This circle cannot be squared.