THE GHETTOS are now leading the movement to reform urban education, but the awakening snarl of the core-city has obscured the growing power of a very different type of reformer: the educational academic. Though ghetto residents hold no affection for their cloistered allies, the two communities are linked by the logic of reform. Harried politicians run from encounters with angry ghetto voters to cry for help in the arms of academics. This winter's Harvard Educational Review lets the layman eavesdrop on what those experts are telling each other, and what they are probably telling their worried political friends.

The issue focuses on "equal educational opportunity," a phrase defined and popularized by James Coleman's monumental study of discrimination in the nation's public schools. For Coleman, equal educational opportunity means insuring equal achievement among minority and majority children, so the phrase has come to symbolize the problem of remaking the nation's rotting urban schools. Many of the 14 feature articles concentrate on Coleman's survey, but as might be expected, they touch on every major theme in the present crisis in urban education.

New arrivals to the dialogue will find this Review cause for both hope and despair. Judging by the sweeping discussion of research and policy issues, academics have never been closer to understanding why ghetto children don't learn; but the answers aren't ready yet, and won't be for some time.

THE Review isn't easy reading. The list of contributors is impressive, ranging from Coleman himself (tracing the evolution of the concept of equal educational opportunity) to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Thomas F. Pettigrew and Kenneth Clark. But the editors apparently decided to restrict authors as little as possible, outlining three major topics: research issues, policy issues, and problems of implementing policy. The result is that many of the pieces are needlessly repetitive.

The non-expert will find even more frustrating the flat, jargonized writing and impenetrable tables of statistics that fill many of the pieces. But these particular difficulties are revealing. The contributors are talking with each other, not to the general public. This is fine to a point, but the Coleman Report was published two years ago and this is the first comprehensive treatment of its contribution to educational thought. As Kenneth Clark points out in the Review, publicizing the inadequacies of the present system is a key first step in spurring both whites and blacks to the political action that will bring reform. The publicity job belongs to academics, and they have avoided it up to now.

One explanation for academic silence could be that experts are still unraveling technical problems in the Report and related research. If the Review is any indication, however, a significant consensus is emerging on the course which reform must follow. Most of the contributors to the Review recognize that equal educational opportunity implies both integration and compensatory education (giving deprived children more and better teachers, books, facilities).

Coleman's most important, and most revolutionary conclusion was that educational inputs--books, class-rooms, facilities, teachers--have relatively little effect on minority group achievement compared to socio-economic factors--particularly, the social class of a student's peers, and his own social class background.

BUT NOW some of Coleman's conclusions about the ineffectiveness of compensatory education are being questioned. In an excellent assessment of Coleman's data and some other relevant research, Henry S. Dyer maintains that while some school factors have no effect on achievement, other inputs are important in spurring achievement. The great contribution of the Coleman survey, Dyer contends, is in establishing the precedent of testing empirically the effect of school factors on achievement.

The Review also reveals a growing consensus on the need for redefining present programs of compensation and integration. Both Cohen and Clark condemn the traditional notion that compensatory education seeks to compensate for the ghetto child's "cultural deprivation." This term imlies none-too-subtly that whatever is black and poor is deprived and whatever is white and middle class is adequate. Apart from its racist connotations, the idea points the finger at the wrong party. The real failure, Review contributors indicate, lies not with the ghetto child but with the school's inability to provide a stimulating "educational environment."

The broad outlines, then, of a policy for refurbishing city schools seem to be taking shape. But definitive answers, if attainable, are still far in the future. The new data from the Coleman Report accounts for much of the new thinking on the question of equal educational opportunity, but as a basis for policy, the Report is riddled with problems. Some of these involve faults in Coleman's survey techniques. The more important involve the size and nature of the survey itself.

The urban crisis is teaching academics--and those school system professionals who take their heads out of the sand--that no one really knows precisely how or why children learn. The Coleman Report gives hints at best, but years of experimentation are necessary before academics can fashion successful programs of compensatory education and integration. Academics are pointed in the right direction, but they are still blindfolded.

It is at this point that the experts begin to bicker. The cautious would wait for more returns before making policy. Others favor a leap into the unknown. Circumstances favor the bolder; as David Cohen points out--the Federal government has already made a massive commitment to compensatory education. And the ghettos are demanding answers. The risk of costly failures, however, remains.