Wealthy parents tend to have more time and financial resources to devote to their children's education. Such parents are notorious for advocating for special placement of their children in advanced and honors classes. As one high school counselor notes, "It's a political system. If you are a parent and want your student in honors English, [the student] is there" (Chmelynski, 1998, p. 50). One parent, who is an attorney, even sued a teacher at a wealthy suburban school after the teacher had given the parent's child a D (Reinstein, 1998, p. 29). Wealthy parents feel a greater sense of entitlement and have higher expectations for their schools than low income parents. In contrast, low income parents either lack the financial resources or the feeling of empowerment to effect change in their children's schools.

Reducing social inequity requires special intervention to ensure that disadvantaged students perform at the same level of achievement as their peers at wealthy school districts. In the past, pre-school programs such as Head Start were believed to hold the key. Today, social scientists realize that a more comprehensive approach is necessary to bridge the equity gap.

In North Carolina, a school program calle

To a significant extent, the problems of working class women persist because they have not participated in the financial gains of the women's movement. Middle class women reaped the greatest benefits. They dramatically increased their presence in professional fields such as medicine, law, and banking: "in little more than a decade women increased their representation among the most prestigious and lucrative professions by 300 to 400 percent" (Ehrenreich, 1990, p. 217). Granted, middle class women still encounter the "glass ceiling" in their efforts to make it to the highest ranks of corporate life. Nevertheless, the women's movement secured a definite change in fortune for women from backgrounds with high social status. These women can now afford to be independent of men. Their financial future is no longer based on marrying into wealth. If a professional woman marries, and later divorces, the specter of impoverished single motherhood is rarely a threat. In contrast, working class women are still largely dependent on the incomes of their husbands.

Working class women will not end their oppression until they succeed in raising their financial status. This translates into securing higher-paying employment in previously male-dominated fields. Such fields as engineering and computer technology offer good opportunities for women but too few take advantage of them because of gender separations in a socialization process that begins early in childhood.

Society must reexamine its values regarding education funding because increased financing results in better schools. Schools offer differing levels of resources to students based on