Public College Boosting

When relating poverty to the achievement gap, one can see the correlation. The achievement gap is the discrepancy in academic performance between groups of students, it is more often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and Hispanic students at the lower end of the performance scale. Many students who are living in poverty fall within these backgrounds and it is understandable why their grades and school performances are suffering. Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of hierarchy needs show that before a child is able to learn or perform any kind of activity, the basic needs must be met, food, shelter, and water (Shaffer, 2014, pp 158).

Students that live in a poor community often lack a good education because the community does not have the resources to allow the students to continue a good education. Students that are marginalized often lack the opportunity to a higher education because they are constantly being underestimated and not given the resources they need in order to be successful. In the article “Still Separate, Still Unequal; America’s Educational Apartheid” by Jonathan Kozol demonstrated the way schools in InterCitys are being forced to used methods that are nowhere helpful for students to be able to learn. Students are given many instructions to follow, but often lack the actual education they deserve. In addition, in the podcast “The Problem

Many middle to lower class families cannot afford to send their kids to school and with Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton giving out generous financial packages to their student, who mostly come from wealthy background. The poorer students are on the losing end because they are not given the opportunity for aid. As Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council of Education, says, "Smart poor kids go to college at the same rate as stupid rich kids." What this is saying is that the wealthy families have vastly more opportunity to succeed in the college system even though they have equal or lesser smarts. Well respected schools such as NYU are now admitting students based on the financial fit not by merit.

Regardless of the mental attitude of individuals, poverty does affect the relation one has with his/her education. For example, low-income families often struggle obtaining materials

The educational system of the united states is not capitalizing on the full potential of its people. Jonathan Kozol in his article “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”, discusses the drastic difference in the quality of education based on a family’s income. Kozol discusses how economic disparities usually coincide with race, but focuses on the economic gap of education. Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “Carlos doesn’t remember”, gives a story and a personal touch, to the issues low income students face. Kozol writing and Gladwell’s podcast, both show that the quality of a child’s education is pure chance. A lottery of being born into a high or low income family dictates the outcome and capitalization of a child’s future.

My own children are being raised by parents with both more money and more education. Yet I do not see my children as having significantly better opportunities than I had at their age” (9). Therefore, although unequal opportunity prevents low income segments of the population from having a fair chance at receiving merit based aid, the same argument, according to Mankiw, doesn’t apply to the one percent in relation to the middle class who all have fairly equal opportunity.

In “The Dangers of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility”, Andrew Simmons, a high school teacher who teaches in a poor area of Los Angeles, argues that higher education’s educational opportunities should be the main promotion for students to attend college. The author’s purpose is to inform and persuade his readers to accept his view on what he sees as a problem of the education system. According to Simmons, teachers focus on the economic advantages that higher education could bring instead of the actual education these institutions offer. Because of this promotion, students in poorer areas focus on their potential wealth instead of their future education while students in wealthier areas focus on their future careers

Unlike other countries such as China, socio-economic background in the US directly impacts the quality of education students receive. Therefore, students living urban poverty not only demonstrate minimal academic progress but also less participation and motivation towards education compared to advantaged students. According to the US Census Bureau, over 22% of students live in poverty and many

This is usually due to the lack of a strong school system, poor funding, or the unlucky chance that a person is born into difficult socioeconomic standards. Whatever the reason, it is safe to conclude that many children of affluent backgrounds do not need, or do not appreciate in a sense, the education that children of less-fortunate families need and want. Jonathan Kozol has brought upon this paradox throughout his life, especially when talking with these students of need, who understand and explicitly state the situation they are in. As one of the students puts it, “It isn’t a question of what students want. It’s what the school may have available” (Kozol 206). While students like Mireya know what they want to do in life, the school they attend restricts pursuing these aspirations and instead confines them to practical but unrelated elective classes. Deprived of the proper education because of the school she attends, Mireya is aware of the tension between wanting to feel liberated but being confined to her situation at hand. In this sense, it is clear to see that the students deserve more than they

In American society, being “educated” means being able to afford the luxuries one can afford. Such luxuries include: a private education, a well-paying job, and a home in a safe and wealthy neighborhood. While it is not impossible to afford these luxuries, it is difficult. For those in America who are “uneducated”, these luxuries are difficult to grasp.  In the article, “When Class Became More Important to a Child’s Education Than Race” the author speaks about two families. One family is “educated”, and the other is “uneducated.” The “educated” Klaitman-Smalls family has enough money to afford the luxuries so their children can receive a well-balanced and expansive background before they enter into a private education. The “uneducated” Lynch

Out of ten low-income students, one will enroll into college. Out of fifty low-income students, one will graduate from high school. From these facts, the number of low-income students of going to college is declining. The question we should be asking is why. From the New York Times, there is an article called ‘The Diploma Divide’, which addresses the issue of why there is a high percentage of low-income American students not getting their bachelor’s degrees. ‘The Diploma Divide’ does a marvelous job making its claim about the low-income degree gap growing because of the costs of attending a university, changes in family structures, and living in poverty segregated neighborhoods.

Some of these include Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Earned Income Tax Credit, Food Stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid (Kelsey, lect. 09/28/15). Due to various budget cuts for these programs, the “government spending and funding which once benefitted society” no longer applies (Kelsey, lect. 10/05/15). Although it has been proven that “American government policy does reduce inequality by aiding the poor”, the U.S. “does less than any other advanced nation to reduce poverty through government benefits” (Fischer, 1996). Even though the United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, it seems to be failing in establishing laws and programs that help the poor. What is frightening, however, is that these policies are many times the ways in which class differences are reduced and how individuals escape poverty. Jesse and Cheryl for example would not have had access to higher education without the funding for some of these policies. The success of these educational policies is what allowed them to escape the cycle of poverty that many families face. The access to higher education is detrimental, because “educational attainment seems to be the key variable for upward mobility in the United States” (Giddens 2014). Therefore, by failing to implement the necessary funding and focus that education needs, the United States is failing many individuals to receive the opportunity of an education and escape their current economic situation. In other words, Putnam summarizes how “poor kids now are in much worse shape than their counterparts

Poverty is an issue that more and more of our nation’s children are coming face to face with in the United States. Each year, there are an increasing number of children entering schools with needs from circumstances, such as poverty. Some of the factors that are related to poverty that may place a child at-risk for academic failure are: single or low educational level parents, unemployment, abuse and neglect, homeless, and non-English speaking (ESL) parents. Academic gap is one of the impacts we may see from poverty in our schools. Academic performance among students from different classes or groups (ethnic, racial, and income) is generally achieved at lower levels.

The school system provides many achievements throughout our life that benefit us, but everything had its consequences. As our system improves year to year there's many challenges that it has to go through issues regarding budget, technology, different aspects as the generation changes, and more. As years passes there have being many issues concerning how the education is affecting the younger generations and how even though many program are involved there isn't a satisfactory end result to provide a successful outcomes. One of the biggest issues concerning according to Grace Chen article is how poverty might affect the percentage of dropouts in an institution because of their financial struggle which might affect them with their lack of food

Drapes are pulled tight over high prestige schools, so a child with a parent that went to school there, alumni, will get in before a child with better academic’s. This is known as a legacy privilege and makes it practically impossible for someone of little or no wealth to get into a good school, like Harvard. Affirmative Actions helps minorities get into schools, but not the white poor American that can’t get assistants. Nevertheless, being poor decreases one’s chances of higher education Rosenblum & Travis, 2016, p. 307 - 312).