I know that authors are never quite satisfied with reviews, even ones as respectful and careful as yours, so permit me to respond to some points you make in a recent Gadfly (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=151#1853).
First, I was careful in Class and Schools to say that school improvement, social and economic reform, and expansion of the role of schools to cover early childhood, after-school, and summer time would all be needed to make significant progress in narrowing the black-white achievement gap. I tried to explain that the book did not dwell on school improvement strategies, not because they were unimportant, but because so many other books and policy analysts focus so extensively on school reform that the discussion has become unbalanced (as well as leaving me with nothing new to say on the subject). I further insisted that many of the school models and teachers frequently held up as gap-closing paragons (like several of the Heritage schools, the KIPP Academies, the Pentagon schools, Jaime Escalante) do excellent work and likely succeed in providing disadvantaged children with better educations than they would otherwise receive. My objection was not to claims that these are good schools, but to claims that they can close the achievement gap without simultaneous reform in the social and economic backgrounds from which children come to school.
Therefore, your suggestions that I ask us to "sit on our hands until the Promised Land arrives;" "quit trying to fix the schools we've got for the kids we've got while we wait for radical social changes to be made," and that mine is "a counsel of despair that plays right into the tendency of some educators to say 'We're doing all that should be expected of us, given the kids we're being sent from the homes they're being sent from, so stop demanding more from us,'" do not accurately reflect the theme of the book.
Second, few of the social changes I promote in the book are "radical." Most have been on the public agenda for quite some time-for example, universal health care, full funding of the Section 8 housing voucher program, or further expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit program. My claim in the book is that dollars spent on these not-at-all radical social changes might spur a bigger achievement bounce for lower class children than many of the unproductive school reforms that educators spend so much time debating. Indeed, I suggest some very incremental reforms (for example, treating the vision problems of low-income children) that almost certainly would have a bigger achievement impact than most practical school reforms. You yourself have been concerned with the over-identification of lower class children as "learning disabled"-school optometric clinics in lower class neighborhoods might well pay for themselves in reduced special education costs alone.
In short, the message of the book is not "social change instead of school improvement," but rather "social change AND school improvement." I have faith that, upon further reflection, you would not disagree with this message.
Richard Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and a visiting lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is formerly an education columnist for the New York Times.