High School Vs. Low Income Students

In the article “Fremont high school”, Jonathan Kozol describes how the inability to provide the needed funding and address the necessities of minority children is preventing students from functioning properly at school. He talks to Meriya, a student who expresses her disgust on the unequal consideration given to urban and suburban schools. She and her classmates undergo physical and personal embarrassments. Kozol states that the average ninth grade student reads at fourth or fifth grade level while a third read at third grade level or below. Although academic problems are the main factor for low grades, students deal with other factors every day. For example, School bathrooms are unsanitary, air condition does not work, classrooms have limited

Education is an integral part of society, School helps children learn social norms as well as teach them 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. In West Trenton Central High School was only 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. These school have lower test scores and high dropout rates. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often form 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 factors to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and

It has become common today to dismiss the lack of education coming from our impoverished public schools. Jonathan Kozol an award winning social injustice writer, trying to bring to light how our school system talks to their students. In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal," Kozol visits many public high schools as well as public elementary schools across the country, realizing the outrageous truth about segregating in our public education system. Kozol, cross-examining children describing their feelings as being put away where no one desires your presence. Children feeling diminished for being a minority; attending a school that does not take into consideration at the least the child’s well being. Showing clear signs of segregation in the education system.

Unfortunately, these children cannot complete their education because they have to travel with their family and learn to manage at a young age a life of hard labor. This however does not diminish their dreams of completing high school and some day attending a university so that they will not have to live the life of struggle their parents did to sustain the household. In cities like Detroit, MI there is a large population of low income Hispanic and African American families. The public school system unfortunately cannot potentially promote a high-quality education. The majority of these students do not receive an entrance level education simply because of living standards. Income plays an important role in education opportunities regarding the quality education each student can pertain. Since the minorities in that area are low-income they cannot afford to attend a private high school that can better prepare them for college. According to a research done at the University of Texas-Pan American, “certain racial or ethnicity factors should play a role in the admissions decision.” (Marklein)

America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems of schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement. Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s

Throughout history, public schools have suffered and still continue to fail while the rest of the world is moving ahead. There are various barriers that have prevented low-income student from succeeding with the rest of the world. Parent involvement plays a role because if they lack higher levels of education, most likely this will cause the student to have a disadvantage. Also, because of families with

Geography played a huge part in my experience with K-12 education. In the study titled, The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools (2012), Logan, Minca, and Adar noted that inequalities of performance between schools that have a majority of minority groups and found connections between the performance of school when looking through the lens of race and ethnicity. Key findings included that African American, Hispanic, and Native American students were most likely to attend a school that averages between the 35th-40th percentile (Logan, Minca, Adar 2012). Three types of high poverty schools were outlined; location in city center, majority African American and mixed location, and majority Hispanic (Logan et al., 2012). The school district that I attended for my K-12 education experience was nearly 95% white, located in the suburbs, and had low poverty. My education experience directly counters the education experience that my student engage in on a daily basis. This has created an internal motivation to

Being a teacher who has spent the past seven years working in a “persistently low-achieving” school, I have gained an understanding of the inequities within Jefferson County Public Schools. Students, who attend schools with higher levels of poverty, are subjected to not receiving the same standard of education as those who attend schools with lower levels of poverty. Educational equity is an issue in our district and has become a main focus for improvement. JCPS has made it a goal to find ways to provide an equitable education to all students, regardless of their gender, socio-economic status or ethnic origin. JCPS wishes to create a system that not only focuses on high achievement, fairness and providing an opportunity in education but ensures every student receives a basic minimum standard of education. Achieving these goals, of course, is easier said than done. Our district, school leaders, teachers, parents, students,

Research in the past decade on the widening gap of educational opportunities between lower and higher income families has shown that children enrolled schools that predominantly serve lower income families tend to have lower pedagogical success and more negative associations regarding the American education system.

A school setting provides opportunities where issues of social justice, oppression, and discrimination can be addressed. According to Bemak and Chung (2009), students of color and economically disadvantaged students are likely to have low academic achievement, in comparison to their White middle class counterparts. These disparities in academic

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol explains the inequalities of school systems in different poor neighborhoods. Kozol was originally a teacher in a public school in Boston. This school didn’t have very many resources and was unable to keep teachers for very long. After pursuing other interests, Kozol took the time from 1988-1990 to meet with children and teachers in several different neighborhoods to better understand issues relating to the inequality and segregation in the school systems. Kozol writes from his own perspective as he visits six different cities and the poorest schools in those cities. These cities consist of East St. Louis in Illinois, the South Side of Chicago in Illinois, New York City, Camden in New Jersey, Washington

After reviewing the Government laws and policies that have been in placed and replaced in history and more currently to contribute and correct the issue. The most important question of all remains. Why does the Achievement Gap still exist? According to former Secretary of Education John King (2016) “Black and Hispanic students continue to lag behind their White peers in achievement and graduation rates.”After so many attempts made by the Government to close the Gap and create equality, clearly there is something that is not being addressed across American Public Schools. Frederica Wilson (2013) former state senate member stated in the Brown vs Board Documentary There is such a difference in going to one school in one community and going to another in another community. Why don't we tackle that problem instead of testing the students predicting they will fail, watching them fail and denying them a good life?”The question now that remains how exactly are the schools different in different communities?

Unfortunately, the school's lack of appropriate education results directly from poor government funding. So even with hard work, the lower-class student is still held down by his socio-economic status. Poverty-stricken parents are unable to offer their children the same attention and motivation as parents of a higher-class can, therefore never providing these children with the mindset that they are able to accomplish the American dream. According to Mantsios, 40 million Americans live in poverty, and the mental and physical affects the low standard of living has on them is undeniable (Mantsios 328). Citizens who live in poverty work long hours for little pay, yet return to a household that in no way symbolizes the hard work put forth. Within this environment, very few people have the positive outlook to mentor children successfully.

“ Historically, low-income students as a group have performed less well than high-income students on most measures of academic success” (Reardon, 2013). Typically low-income families come from low-income parts of the state making a school that does not have as much funding as a higher economic schools does lack in resources for their students. The school then has lower paid teachers and administrators, with lower quality supplies. This results in a school which typically has faculty who do not perform as well as the well-funded schools. “The law fails to address the pressing problems of unequal educational resources across schools serving wealthy and poor children” (Hammond, 2007). Students from low and high income families will not be able to achieve the same education because their education simply is not the same.

I attended private schools from preschool to eighth grade and a decent public school for high school. My academic barriers aren't related to the execution of teaching. Instead, they stem from the cultural barriers that came with attending schools in Visalia, California. When I graduated from Saint Paul’s School in May of 2013, I was one of the five African-American students in the entire school, which began with preschool, and the only one in the middle school. However, this lack of representation did not only occur at Saint Paul’s, it was the same at my two previous schools. The lack of exposure that my classmates a black student like me was evident when they asked me why I wore my hair in braids or why my hair wasn't straight like theirs.