Helen Ladd and her husband, former New York Times Education Editor Edward Fiske, used three main measures to evaluate the progress South Africa’s government has made to balance racial equity in its education system: equal treatment, educational opportunity and educational adequacy.
Ladd, of Duke University, expounded on their work Friday when she gave a Monroe-Paine Distinguished Lecture in Public Affairs, presented by MU’s Truman School of Public Affairs.
Ladd lived in South Africa for six months in 2002 on a Fulbright grant.
The lecture was based on “Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” a book she co-authored with Fiske. Ladd is Duke’s Edgar Thompson professor of public policy studies and an economics professor. She also is the associate director of the school’s Sanford Institute.