Education Is a Necessity: Poor Students Deserve Equal Opportunity for Higher Education

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Many young people dream about having successful careers as lawyers, doctors, or CEO's of major corporations, but to achieve these goals they must be adequately educated. However, not all people are given the same opportunities as others. Why? Education is effected by the funding of schools. According to Caroline M. Hoxby, Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard, local tax revenues are an "effective and efficient means of providing education...and gives incentives to both residents and school staff" (2). However, in Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol argues that funding schools solely with property tax is not effective because the property revenues of poor families do not compare to those of the richer families; thus less money goes toward the poor children's education. Therefore, I agree with Kozol in that local property taxes are an unfair way to fund schools because students of poor districts are not given adequate education nor do the parents have sufficient amounts of money to finance their schools.

The bottom line is schools need a good amount of money to keep themselves running properly, however providing those funds only through property tax will not ensure that. Kozol states that typical wealthy suburban homes are "worth more than $400,000" (54), while in a poor urban district homes costs as low as $4000 (19). Since property tax is based on the value of homes, it is clear that the wealthy homeowners are able to contribute a larger tax base in proportion to its student population. However, for urban communities which mostly consist of poor families, the meager values of their home do not provide enough money to adequately pay for their children's education. To accumulate more money for schools, poor ...

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... an incentive to parents.

Caroline Hoxby's statement about local property tax being a good way of funding schools is not true because students of poor school districts do not receive equal treatment in education. In reality this method of funding schools is neither effective nor efficient which clearly illustrated in the lives of the impoverished students. Every student deserves to get equal opportunities for education. Many people are granted this opportunity, but what about the poor, disadvantaged students? Their education will not allow them to reach their goals of becoming a CEO or a lawyer. However, equal opportunities might be possible with equal funding, this change would have an immense impact on those poor students; it will give them a chance at Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, privileges our founding fathers established for everyone.

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