An urban student faces many disadvantages when attending school regardless of whether they attend a public or private school. Before we can consider how to take an urban student seriously we must examine where they are from. Urban students are those living in higher density communities within the inner-cities; areas of diversity, poverty, crime and low-income. Today we can best assign the term “urban school” to public schools that are in these metropolitan areas. Many of these schools exist within educational systems that lack sufficient resources and quality educators to ensure their educational needs are met. We also tell ourselves that the United States cannot or may never completely successfully resolve the issues with our education system but we are be able to continue to endeavors. Urban student themselves need to make a stance on their education in order to have better futures. Furthermore, educational attainment is related to the availability of opportunities, as well as the academic abilities, financial resources, and persistence of the individual.
Urban students’ face numerous challenges, for many of urban students come from neighbors or communities surrounded with alcohol, drug, sex, continuous violence, and poverty. Living in communities where urban students are surrounded with drug dealers and some of the dealers being individuals’ urban students know personally whether they went to school with the person who is now the drug dealer or they grew up with. Urban students are now being dealing with the pressures of the dealer who try to influence urban students to drop out of school and turn to a life of drugs and violence. According to Students Against Destructive Decisions Organization, about three out of ...
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The gap between the nation’s best and worst public schools continues to grow. Our country is based on freedom and equality for all, yet in practice and in the spectrum of education this is rarely the case. We do not even have to step further than our own city and its public school system, which many media outlets have labeled “dysfunctional” and “in shambles.” At the same time, Montgomery County, located just northwest of the District in suburban Maryland, stands as one of the top school systems in the country. Within each of these systems, there are schools that excel and there are schools that consistently measure below average. Money alone can not erase this gap. While increased spending may help, the real problem is often rooted in the complex issues of social, cultural, and economic differences. When combined with factors involving the school itself and the institution that supports it, we arrive at what has been widely known as the divide between the suburban and urban schools. Can anything actually be done to reverse this apparent trend of inequality or are the outside factors too powerful to change?
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For some students it is difficult to get a good education. These students live in a poor community and are required to go to schools that have a low graduation rate. These schools have a certain reputation such that other students refer to it as the “ghetto school”, “where the pregnant girls go”, and the “dropout factory”. This
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...ce and the struggle to achieve academic success in inner city public schools. The book looks beyond statistics that show the impact of the drug trade in communities like Oakland and into the lives of families that are most affected. Though the book’s intention is not to analyze the effects of the loss of jobs, teenage pregnancy and lack of parental involvement, it successfully does that and more as it presents the stories of these young people who have had to overcome all of those issues and more. This story should serve as an inspiration to anyone who wants to make a difference in their communities, as well as to anyone who wants to change their own situations.
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This mixing of inner-city and suburban cultures creates new challenges for students and teachers alike. Children from the inner city characteristically have lower GPAs, attend very few AP classes and have a dropout rate that is much higher than their suburban counterparts. This has been an area for much exploration and study throughout the years, but yet the trend of a knowledge gap among children seems to continue. Perhaps one area that needs to be further explored is the differences in cultural identity in these two groups of students and its impact on the education these students wish to achieve.
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I used to think that urban education simply meant education that went on in the cities, but from what I have learned is that, yes education goes on in cities, but it goes beyond that. Urban education is not so simple due to all of the dynamics and subsections that fall under it, such as the students and how they are taught, how the teachers teach vs. how the school/state want them to teach, the students learning, school funding, and many other factors that I used to not be aware of. As a whole urban education is the education which many, like myself, have experienced; I have learned a new view to education, re-evaluated my own, changed my view on education, defined urban education in my own way, discovered the factors within it, and have some