Economic And Educational Inequality In Education

Throughout decades, education inequality is still one of the most deliberate and controversial issues in the United States. Thus far, the privilege or right to receive education has not attained the level of equality throughout the nation. Poor districts obtain less educational funds while rich districts obtain more, which create an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas. In other words, the education gap is the root of inequality in America. Inequality in education is linked to the major problems in the society. The need for studies to be done to find ways of overcoming these inequalities is very inevitable. The means of mitigating these inequalities are important for the entire world. This is something of great interest due to the fact that children need quality education which is a pillar for a guaranteed future. Generally speaking, the distinctions among races, genders, and classes in the society have caused the educational inequality in America.

The United States is a country based on equal opportunity; every citizen is to be given the same chance as another to succeed. This includes the government providing the opportunity of equal education to all children. All children are provided schools to attend. However, the quality of one school compared to another is undoubtedly unfair. Former teacher John Kozol, when being transferred to a new school, said, "The shock from going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest cannot be overstated (Kozol 2)." The education gap between higher and lower-income schools is obvious: therefore, the United States is making the effort to provide an equal education with questionable results.

America’s education system is a fine exemplar, as the growth of inequality has greatly affected its learning environments and the students themselves. According to Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, the difference between math and reading scores between low- and high-income families have been growing tremendously compared to several decades ago (“Growing Income Inequality Threatens American Education”). A main cause of this is the stress low-income families suffer, as they continue to struggle with food, housing, and learning supplies. Higher-income children have no such concerns and only focus on their education, creating misconceptions of low-income students, such as being lazy and unintelligent. Higher tuitions and student supplies also aid social inequality, as they discourage lower and middle-class individuals from learning due to exorbitant cost, which has more than tripled over the past 50 years for both private and public colleges (“Tuition and Fees and Room and Board over Time”). Inequality has so much free reign over America that low-income individuals have less than a 10% chance to escape their current social position, and their children have even less than that (“Mobility, Measured”). As a result, social inequality forces America’s citizens to remain socially and economically stagnant, devoid of any opportunity to change in

What grade would America receive for our education system? America would probably get a D because we cannot provide everyone with the same quality education as other public schools, private, and charter schools. Education is important in all countries especially in America, but there is so much educational inequality that everyone does not get an equal opportunity at a good education. This can be due to the location and income of families that can determine how successful they are going to be in school. The government has attempted to increase graduation rates by implementing new laws and standards that have actually in time proven to be unsuccessful. This essay is going to highlight the educational inequality in America,

Fiscal policy is the public policy domain that I am most interested in. But education policy is a strong secondary interest of mine, and recently, with the school closings in Detroit and Philadelphia and persistent problems in public education, I find urban policy to be extremely important. Additionally, as a conservative, seeing the increasing income inequality, in terms of solutions, I would like to analyze the deep root of the problem in lieu of a solution that I believe only scratches the surface such as increasing taxes on top earners. I do not think this will solve this issue because there is a disparity between the top 1% of earners and the top 1% of wealth owners and there is no real wealth tax. Wealth is what creates inequality in opportunity. Strengthening equal opportunity through K-12 education is where I would start looking answers.

Educational inequality is the difference in the learning results, or efficacy, experienced by students coming from different groups. Access and opportunity for education was not a right equally given to all people in our country. From the beginning of our nation access to public education was reserved for whites only and was forbidden for enslaved and free blacks. After Emancipation, when some public and private schooling was made available to African Americans, black children were segregated into under-resourced schools. Due to circumstances that kept most African American families in abject poverty, the masses of black children encountered structural barriers that prevented them from gaining a complete formal education.

Education is the foreground to success in modern society. The quality of education and the amount of education one receives is a large determinant in the financial wellbeing of individuals. Studying the inequalities found in the American educational system is essential because it uncovers how social stratifications, inequalities, and social constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality are created as well as reinforced. Although many of the notions about races, classes, genders, and sexualities have been created outside of the school, it is in the educational system that children are presented with the social constructions of race, class, and gender that dominate our society.

The United States has a reputation for being free to all with promises of equal opportunity. America is not as equal as people think. In regards to income and wealth distribution, the U.S. has fallen behind a number of countries, such as Iran and Turkey ,and despite the freedom granted, America has become a place where inequality thrives and lower class people have little opportunity to move to the next financial class. This inequality finds its source within America’s education system, specifically alongside the disparity of opportunities and resources imposed on students in elementary school

The increase in earnings premium for education has affected the net growth of earning inequality in many developed economies over the last few decades. From 1980 to 2005, the variation of average income from college education and its education premium explains about 65% of income diffusion in the US.

In the 21st Century everything is digitized, from emails to the education system. This trend is especially prevalent in Marin County, where the median income is $90,535, nearly double that of the national median income. The elementary schools in the county teach their students to use websites like StudyIsland™ and TypingPal™ to help students learn, study, and excel in the ever evolving technological world. This trend follows in the middle and high school curriculum. With a culture so embedded in technology as a result of the assumption of wealth and access, the district, faculties, and students have grown accustomed to amenities only a minority of people have access to. Certainly, this isn’t the case as there are students who are economically

Li Chunling focused research on rural children in jobs and education, eventually writing an article based on the research analysis. Her article, “Trends in Educational Inequality in Different Eras (1940-2010) –A Re-Examimation of Opportunity Inequalities in Urban-Rural Education,” describes the differences between Upper and Middle class families (164). One point of the article is focused upon, “The Industrial Hypothesis, Reproduction Hypothesis, and Credentialism Hypothesis—to explain how industrialization, educational expansion, changes in national policies, and changes in class structure affect educational inequality” (Chunling 165). Industrialization, a topic similar to Globalization, continuously matches itself in the modern world. According to Chunling, the Industrial Hypothesis, “Predicts that as the level of industrialization increases, family background and its ascribed factors gradually have a weaker impact on educational

In America, there is a definitely a link between income inequality and diminished opportunities. This link occurs especially in education. On average, student outcomes and their opportunity to learn are more determined by the neighborhood where a child lives, than his or her abilities. The current education system in America is more likely to reinforce the existing patterns of inequality than to make opportunities accessible. Additional state funding should be given to low income school districts to give them an equal opportunity.

One of the most common cultural tenets in the United States is that “education is the great equalizer.” Even though it is impossible to deny what education has done in order to better the inequality, personally, I believe it is not all that great.

Equal opportunities are the centre of every educational institution. Every teacher and school strives to give every student the education they deserve, which is taught to their optimum best. However, in a school setting, there are many independent and dependent variables, which can cause issues.

Obviously not everyone can see sociology happening around them, certainly I couldn’t. I never thought that being Hispanic, White, African American, Asian, or any other racial or ethnic group could affect your outcome in educational achievements. Let it be known that this is a problem that has not only been present for a long time, but still a problem today that affects hundreds of thousands of students. Many kids are deprived of the same standards of education as other children. “Concentrating students with these disadvantages in racially and economically homogenous schools depresses it further. Schools that the most disadvantaged black children attend are segregated because they are located in segregated high-poverty neighborhoods, far distant from truly middle-class neighborhoods” (Richard Rothstein 1.2). School districts with large populations of racial minority groups fail to provide the same level of prestige and rigor needed to push students to that next milestone in their education as one would in “White” areas. How can we close the gap between the rich and the poor when high paying jobs require high levels of education, and when high levels of education are almost unreachable to those who were given a low level of education in the first place? Conflict theorists claim that problems have risen simply because Whites have better academic achievements than other minority groups. This is due to inequality in areas such as standardized testing which could lead to poor