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Cet article porte sur les difficultés du système scolaire américain depuis le constat qui en a été fait en 1983 dans A Nation at Risk : the Imperative for Educational Reform. Le rapport relevait la dégradation des performances des écoliers américains depuis " les années Spoutnik " et rappelait que le contrat national à l'égard des enfants était de fournir à chacun d'entre eux une éducation de qualité. Aujourd'hui, études et analyses montrent pourtant la grande inégalité des conditions scolaires et des performances des écoliers américains.

This paper contends that, contrary to the promises stated in A Nation at Risk, all American children are not “entitled to a fair chance,” to an education that will enable them to secure “gainful employment.” Because school budgets depend on the prosperity or poverty levels of their location, the quality of education provided is mostly unequal and accounts for the unequal performances among American students. Because American students do not stand high in international comparisons, several reforms have been introduced, but none of them addressed the problem of unequal school budgets. In spite of the fundamental principle that America provides “equal chances” to all, the school system is flawed by the refusal to interfere with the values of individual responsibility and by the distribution of responsibility between the federal and the local state authorities. Given the ideological basis of American democracy, there is little hope of seeing the gap between white and minority school performances narrow.