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Education inequality in america essays
Inequality in the American school system
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The challenge of creating equal opportunity in schools has existed for years in the United States. Student and teacher life can vary greatly based on which district the school is located in. Issues like unfair opportunity, unqualified schools, and funding issues shroud the progress of educational reform.
Prudence L. Carter argues that too many schools are in poor condition when it comes to programs, resulting in a lower success rate. Carter states “we cannot expect all students to achieve when far too many are climbing stairwells with broken handrails and missing steps, tripping and falling as they work to keep up, while others are zooming up on elevators,” in reference to the opportunities children are given at school. Families living in low-income communities do not have the same access to school programs that children in high-income communities do. “Those struggling with poverty and family instability cannot be expected to succeed at the same rate, on average, as those who will never know hunger and who have little to no exposure to unemployment, homelessness and/or
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She claims that “schools are complex ecosystems,” meaning that there are multiple factors in question. One factor is the challenge of hiring good teachers, “given the privations of the job and poor odds of student success.” Some teachers choose to leave schools in low-income areas due to the amount of money they receive, as schools in high-income areas earn more; creating an imbalance between good or bad teachers and high or low-income areas. Another factor are the unsafe conditions in schools, as “it is hard to teach and even harder to learn in such places”. Problems like “stiflingly hot classrooms, collapsing ceilings, poisoned drinking water” all intervene with the ability for children to learn. By focusing on these issues, schools can repair and mend the in-school stressors that affect children in low-income
Goldstein argues a problem with education policy is, “American policy makers require every public school to use the same strategy…” (261) When facing the problem of inequality in education a teacher needs to be fluid with his or her curriculum. In fact, one of the best ways to allow for fluidity is through peer-to-peer help. Goldstein states, “(teaching hospital model) allows best practices tailored to a specific school to be passed from professional to professional.” (255) Peer-to-peer help not only does this allow for constructive feedback, but also it allows teachers to learn from one another. While policy makers might not know a schools demographics and unique situation teachers in the school will. Thus, teachers can help one another on their unique problem through a collaborative process. Peer to peer help allows for the design of, “creative curriculum materials and to lead school turnaround efforts.” (232) The problems associated with inequality can be thought out and explored through teachers working
Tomlinson & Imbeau (2010) believe that there is a strong association between opportunities in life and educational opportunity. However, Tomlinson & Imbeau (2010) argue that people often misconstrued the notion of equal access to education to mean that all students should receive the exact same pacing, resources and instruction in the classroom. Therefore creating a one size fits all education system. More importantly, differentiated instruction recognises that students are not the same and that access to equal education means that given a certain goal, each student should be provided with the resources, instruction and support to facilitate them in meeting that objective (Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010, p. 12).
She says that “the public is largely unaware of the problem” of low level education taught in urban high schools. This implies that the public is not concerned if the students receive the correct level of education. This seems reasonable, because for student failure, teachers use the excuse of “lack of parental support” to the policy makers. The policy makers are accepting this excuse, but at the same time the policy makers don’t put in the time and effort in checking how the teachers are performing. For example, “policymakers don’t visit classrooms or, as we do, sit in on teacher meetings designed to help teachers reflect on their work.” This results in teachers are allowed to perform their job in how they want. For example, “teachers have been trained to think their work is done if they have delivered the material in the textbook, kept the class from bothering the principal and assigned grades that don’t fail too many students.” With this, teachers believe they are doing a good job even if students don’t learn anything. Mitchell makes another claim that teachers are blaming the “background” of students to the policy makers. Color students that speak “accented english” are contending with the “white middle class,” seem to be requiring elementary mechanics at the high school level. The students seem to be “capable of only drawing; as in need of discipline rather than encouragement. They are asked to make acrostics in middle school social studies; to write eight sentences in high school English class; and to fill out endless worksheets in math class.” The reasoning for students only able to do these activities is because the students “are not turned on.” Unmotivation to do well seems to be the problem, along with the nonsense
Poorer schools with more diverse populations have poor educational programs. Teachers methodically drone out outdated curriculum on timetables set by standards set by the state. Students are not engaged or encouraged to be creative thinkers. They are often not even given handouts or physical elements of education to touch or feel or engage them into really connecting to the material being presented by the teacher in front of them. Time is not wasted exploring any of the subjects in a meaningful way. As much of the curriculum is gone through as the teacher can get through given the restriction of having a classroom of students that are not picking it up adequately enough according to standardized tests scores. So time is spent re-droning the material to them and re-testing before the cycle repeats in this classroom and other subject classrooms in these types of school. This education is free. As John Gatto writes about in his book, “Against School”, it seems as if the vast majority of students are being taught be blue collared, low paid but obedient citizens. As she makes her way up to less diverse, more likely private and expensive schools, the education becomes better. Students are engaged by teachers that seem to like to teach. Students are encouraged to be
Peske, Heather G., and Kati Haycock. "Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality: A Report and Recommendations by the Education Trust." Education Trust. N.p., June 2006. Web. 12 Jan. 2014.
California is one of the largest states in the country and has one of the biggest state budgets, but in the past several years, its school system has become one of the worst in the nation because of enormous budget cuts in efforts to balance the state’s enormous deficit. The economic downturn at the end of the 2000s resulted in even more cuts to education. It is in environments like this one in which students from poor backgrounds become most vulnerable because of their lack of access to support in their homes as well as other programs outside of schools. Their already financially restricted school districts have no choice but to cut supplementary programs and increase class sizes among other negative changes to public schools. The lack of financial support from the state level as well as demands for schools to meet certain testing benchmarks by the state results in a system in which the schools are no longer able to focus on students as individuals; they are forced to treat students as numbers rather than on an individual case by case basis. An article from the Los Angeles Times showed that majority of Californians give California schools “a grade of C or below” and half think that the quality of schools will continue to decline (Watanabe).While the economic downturn affected the public school system in a negative way, it was not the sole root of its problems. It just simply exacerbated already existing issues.
“Despite decades of federal, state, and local programs intended to support young children’s preparation for schooling, children from low-income families continue to begin formal schooling at a disadvantage.... ... middle of paper ... ... Sometimes they won’t learn anything, they may have made some good friends, or enemies, but they never really realized how to do certain things the teacher wanted them to grasp.
The issue of equality in education is not a new problem. In 1787, our federal government required all territories petitioning for statehood to provide free education for all citizens. As part of this requirement, every state constitution included, “an education clause, which typically called for a “thorough and efficient” or “uniform” system of public schools” (School Funding 6). Despite this requirement, a “uniform” system of schools has yet to be achieved in this country for a variety of reasons, many of which I will discuss later on. During the early part of th...
In many low income communities, there are teachers that are careless and provide their students with poor quality education. These teachers are there just to make sure that they keep receiving their monthly paychecks and act in this way because they believe that low income students do not have the drive, the passion, or the potential to be able to make something of themselves and one day be in a better place than they are now. Anyon reveals that in working class schools student’s “Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.” (3). This is important because it demonstrates that low income students are being taught in a very basic way. These children are being negatively affected by this because if they are always being taught in this way then they will never be challenged academically, which can play a huge role in their futures. This argument can also be seen in other articles. In the New York Times
Education is an integral part of society, school helps children learn social norms as well as teach them how to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. These schools have lower test scores and high dropout rates. In Trenton Central High School West, there was an 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often from low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial reasons to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and further teacher education, urban schools can be transformed and be better equipped to prepare their students for the global stage.
In fact, social-conflict theory suggests that schools can play a role in reinforcing inequalities. Vance even speaks briefly about how the government’s attempt to revive rural communities’ schools fails to benefit low income families in several chapters. This shows that despite a child’s best efforts, they may still fail to attend college and rise above society’s expectations of them due to a weak education system, and unfortunately the state of America’s hands is out of the student’s hands. On top of this, college may never be an option for capable and hardworking pupils since the financial burden of higher education is so great, and public schools do little to educate its students about scholarships and financial aid as demonstrated by Vance when he first considers
Achievement gaps in schools across America impinge on racial-ethnic and socioeconomic status groups. For generations school systems focus on improving the achievement gaps for low-income and minority students. Statistics have provided evidenced that the school systems made enormous progress between 1970 and 1988, but came to a halt thereafter. Presently in the 20th century the gap has widened and the need for improvement is challenging for the school administr...
A significant problem of practice in education is teacher bias. Teacher bias has implications around race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status. Teachers must be willing to examine their beliefs, acknowledge and overcome their biases. Teachers need to evaluate their practices in relation to their ideals as well as recognize and assess the position of power they hold in their classrooms in order to be true Social Justice Educators (Cooper, 2003).
In terms of talking about the accessibility of school funding, equality of opportunity would be where all public schools are distributed the same amount money for their school. Once the money is distributed, it should then be spread evenly amongst areas in dire need of help. Money could be dispersed to help aid in special needs for kids, in support the arts, music, and sports programs, or for technology that may be a useful teaching tactic. Most importantly, this funding would be given to the areas and programs that were struggling, and where students would benefit the most. If a school had an outstanding arts and music program, but their special education department was lacking, money should be given to the education department to help make improvements and provide the teachers and students with the proper resources.
Living in poverty exposes children to disadvantages that influence many aspects in their life that are linked to their ability to do well in school. In the United States of America there are an estimated 16.4 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). “The longer a child lives in poverty, the lower the educational attainment” (Kerbo, 2012). Children who are raised in low-income households are at risk of failing out before graduating high school (Black & Engle, 2008). U.S. children living in poverty face obstacles that interfere with their educational achievement. Recognizing the problems of living in poverty can help people reduce the consequences that prevent children from reaching their educational potential.