News Journal: Education can resuscitate the American dream

Is the American Dream dead?

Most Americans think so. “By almost two to one –64 percent to 33 percent –they say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead,” according to a Bloomberg National Poll.

“The lack of faith is especially pronounced among those making less than $50,000 a year,” says Bloomberg. “By a 73 percent to 24 percent margin, they say the economy is unfair. Even 60 percent of those whose annual income is $100,000 or more bemoan the absence of a fair deal.”

My generation was brought up to believe that if you worked hard, had some talent and maybe a little luck, America was a place where you could get ahead regardless of your family background or income level. I can’t recall one politician in my lifetime that didn’t invoke that dream.

What happened? Go to cbo.gov to see the Congressional Budget Office’s eye-opening charts tracking the enormous growth of income inequality since 1979.

It has happened in other countries as well, but “the widening has been particularly big in the U.S.,” says a recent Bank of American Merrill Lynch newsletter. “The share of income accruing to the top 1 percent of households has been rising since the 1970s and is now the highest since the 1920s.”

A U.S. Census Bureau Chart tracking changes in real family income between 1979 and 2009 shows that the bottom 20 percent of families lost 7.4 percent in that period while the top 5 percent gained 72.7 percent.

Let’s clear the air about income inequality. I’m not arguing, nor are any people I take seriously, that we should try to end it. There has always been income inequality, and always will be in a capitalist society. That’s not the reason so many have lost faith in the American Dream.

They don’t mind inequality as long as they feel there is equal opportunity. When they don’t believe that, when they feel the deck is stacked against them and in favor of the very rich, we lose something that has been perhaps the most vital part of the American experience.

There are good books that trace how this has happened, and there are many causes –among them automation, globalization, changes in tax laws, and moving from an industrial to a digital economy. But perhaps the most important reason for the widening opportunity gap, and one we can still do something about, is education.

As the poor grew poorer, the middle class stagnated, and the top percentiles did better and better, economically mixed neighborhoods became rarer and rarer, and educational disparities widened between those living in poor localities and those living in rich suburbs.

Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford sociologist, says that his study found that “in the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between … a child from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000 … would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.”

Reardon goes on to say “It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.”

The correlation between educational achievement and economic opportunity will grow even stronger in the years ahead, when competition in the global economy will depend more and more on a highly educated workforce. We can’t afford as a country not to invest in increased spending that includes preschool education for all children.

That relatively short-term increase in government spending will pay off in the long run. It will lay the groundwork for economic growth that will increase tax revenues and reduce the deficit. And it will go a long way toward creating the kind of equal opportunity that most Americans feel we have lost.

I grew up believing in the American Dream. I want to believe in it again.

Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware.