Intractable self-fulfilling prophecies fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education

The civil rights struggle for equal educational opportunity has yet to be achieved at the start of the 21st century. Inequality persists but problem and remedy are refrained from integrating schools, to ensuring equal access in resegregated settings, to closing the performance gap. As seen through ecological theory (R. S. Weinstein, 2002b), complex, multilayered, and interactive negative self-fulfilling prophecies create or perpetuate educational inequities and unequal outcomes. Society has failed to grapple with its entrenched roots in the achievement culture of schools. If this insidious dynamic is to be changed, an educational system that sorts for differentiated pathways must be replaced with one that develops the talents of all. Psychology has a critical role to play in promoting a new understanding of malleable human capabilities and optimal conditions for their nurturance in schooling.