Equity and excellence in education reform : An unfinished agenda

This paper argues that the recent wave of school reform literature has neglected females, thereby threatening to close already narrowing windows of opportunity for their advanced education beyond high school. A line-by-line content analysis of 138 articles on educational reform published in nine influential professional journals between 1983 and January 1987, showed that the educational reform movement largely ignores issues of gender equity, and that males far outnumber females in authorship and in depiction in photos and illustrations. The report concludes by making the following recommendations to enhance equity in education, which the Excellence in Education movement ignores: (1) Classroom interaction between teachers and students must include more minority and female participation. (2) Curriculum content must address the academic problem areas that have historically plagued female students, chiefly in mathematics and science, in the same ways that remedial reading programs have traditionally been programmed for males. (3) Understanding why females and minority groups score lower than white males on standardized tests despite higher report card grades requires research. (4) Career counseling reform is needed to avoid course and career segregation and stereotyping. (5) The recruitment and retention of females in educational leadership positions will ensure supervision sensitive to the negative outcomes of gender bias in our nation's schools.