Racial Inequality In Education

From a young age, my parents instilled in me the belief that education is the pathway to opportunity. By obtaining an education, I could acquire knowledge, develop skills, and pursue a rewarding career. However, as I grew older, I soon recognized that factors outside of my control could decide if I graduated high school and attended college. Three sources, which examine the topic of educational inequality are “A Public Education Primer- Basic (And Sometimes Surprising Facts About the U.S. Education System),” “Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares,” and “A Dozen Economic Facts About K-12 Education.” Therefore, funding disparities, educational resource availability, and college accessibility suggest the role educational inequality plays throughout students’ lives.

Racial disparities exist in every aspect of our society. It exists in religion, socioeconomic status, life-chances, media, etc. It affects everyone even if they realize or not. Education is one of the things that are also affected by the racial stratification occurring in the United States. In this paper I will look in to whether Tennessee is better or worse for educational advancement by comparing four races and their high school graduation rates on the national and state levels. The four races used will be; Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and White. I will then tie specific theories to why these disparities may exist. This will hopefully give insight in to this touchy topic and provide a starting point for correcting the gap.

Racial inequality persists in the current U.S. education system, despite nationwide efforts to promote the acceptance of students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Minority students, most notably African American and Latino, receive lower qualities of education compared to the Caucasian majority and are, as a result, at an indisputable disadvantage after primary and secondary education. According to a 2014 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, “students of color in public schools are punished more and receive less access than white students to experienced teachers” (Abdul-Jabbar 31). Higher suspension rates and an increased frequency of corporal punishment use, allowed in 19 states as of 2014 according to Business Insider (Adwar), for minority students are two disciplinary examples of underlying racial discrimination with the current U.S. education system. Economic repercussions of racial inequality in education have been proven to include wealth gaps, higher unemployment rates, and financial instability for minorities in later life. Due to the prominence of racial segregation within schools, it remains a controversial point of debate in modern-day society, resulting in attempts such as affirmative action to establish racial equality in education. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the United States Supreme Court declared affirmative action to be a justified policy in the

It should be on revelation that African Americans like other minority groups are already receiving an unjust education compared to their white counterparts. Being an African American in today’s education system can already be considered a disadvantage, and from multiple sources such as; Brookings.edu article over “Unequal Opportunity: Race And Education” and Pew Research Center.org article over “On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites are Worlds Apart”, all the data can be traced back to African Americans falling behind on the achievement scale and the educational gap only continuing to rise, and this is without the negligence of Ebonics being factored in.

I met Elias G, a black student who lives in my neighborhood and is learning about Anesthesia, at the Foothill College Cafeteria. In this personal interview, he emphasized that none of his close African American friends in his high school have entered universities. As for why, he argues that inequality still remains in college admissions and scholarship systems. Today, higher education seems to be considered the only way in which one can move his social status up in the nation. As a result, many politicians and leaders in the country have emphasized the importance of education. A number of policies regarding education have been published, executed, and planned by those already highly educated in the nation. These policies have been truly successful

Education inequality continues as more than 140,000 students, predominantly black students, were kept back in kindergarten in 2012. Black students are more likely to be held back, despite research showing that holding back children does not benefit them socially or academically. Retention rates for students increase when they come into their first year of high school. While 12 percent of black students are held back in ninth grade, the equivalent is just 4 percent of white students (Cook). African American students are also more likely to drop out before earning a high school diploma. Even when it comes to discipline, Caucasians receive different treatment. Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times higher than white

Education has been a staple necessity throughout the United States for years. From an early age, children attend school in order to learn concepts that will better prepare them for success in the future. Since Brown v. Board of Education, a nineteen fifty four court case that declared segregation in the United States public school system holds no ground, integration has been essentially mandated between blacks and whites in the education program (Hannah-Jones, 2014). Over the years, however, the system has received many alterations, such as a division between blacks and whites through poverty, that challenges the ideas of integration in the school system. These new economic and social issues bring into question whether or not the school

For the first century of the United States, Congress had a restricted but active position in education, which expanded after the Civil War in 1865. At that time, the federal government mandated new union states to offer free public schools and established an early form of the Department of Education. From the late 1930s to the early 1990s, the Supreme Court's opposition to congressional power decreased, clearing the way for a greater federal role in education. The federal role in education increased as Congress provided funding for the construction of schools, teacher salaries, and school lunch programs. However, this assistance was geared toward wealthier school districts, which negatively impacted poorer, urban schools (Martin, 2012).

Social Class is a position held by an individual composed of combinations of parental education, parental occupation status, family income and wealth. Students whose parents have higher levels of any of these traits of class, more often than not, have better opportunities. Essentially, education and opportunities stem from money. If a parent has a higher income, they’ll be able to provide more help to their children if they’re falling behind in school. Also, they have the ability to assist in paying for college and those with higher education feel the need to help their children with paying for college. The more money parents have, the better the schools, and the better the education. Another factor that plays in the role of education inequality

The racial achievement gap is a highly talked about issue within education in the United States. It refers to the differences in standardized test scores between black students and white students. Even though this issue is still prevalent today, it has improved greatly from the past. Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, where the supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional for schools to be racially segregated, the racial achievement gap has become smaller. However, it still exists which has led many people to wonder why and design experiments to figure out what could be causing it. The racial achievement gap is a big issue because it shows that black students are falling behind in school which can lead to them not going to college or dropping out. It is also an issue because all students deserve to have an equal education and they should all have a chance to succeed in life. In order to fulfill equal education for everyone, the reasons for the achievement gap need to be found and fixed. Some people have already investigated independent variables that could impact the achievement gap such as personal faith, self-affirmation, and students schoolmates. However, not many experiments have been done to test the impact of unequal spending per pupil on the racial achievement gap. In this paper, an experiment will be designed to investigate the possible effects it has on the gap with a hypothesis that the unequal spending increases the achievement gap.

In his article “Dilemmas of Racial Inequality in American Higher Education”, Robert Teranishi – a professor of Education, and the Morgan and Helen Chu Endowed Chair in Asian American Studies- explores “the importance of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) to our nation’s higher education priorities.” (5) Teranishi conducts “the study of AAPIs college participation within a broad set of conditions through which all students must navigate as they pursue higher education.” (5) He mainly focuses on the effects of individual agency, social conditions, and organizational structures of how they influence each other in a result of a severe gap in educational mobility. In other words, Teranishi addresses the dilemmas of racial inequality in American Higher Education in the aspects of stereotypes, racial stratification, and broader issues about the racial inequality.

The gap between caucasian and non caucasian families has nearly tripled. In the last 25 years, total wealth gaps average from $85,000 in 1984 too $236,500 in 2009. A factor that fits into this number is inheritance and financial support from family and friends. Another part of the this racial injustice is the inequality of education. Just to scratch the surface of the issue, where people were born, raised and academic opportunities widens this gap between discriminated races and those that are not. Even though some of these inequalities are being combated, racial injustice welcome help and change in correcting this issue in this

Throughout America’s past, racial inequality has been a reoccurring theme in our society. Ever since the Europeans invaded America the white man has been superior compared to all ethnicities. No more than two hundred years ago, African Americans were slaves and only counted as three fifths of a person. Within the past hundred years African Americans have managed to obtain more equality in some situations, but in other cases racial inequality has become worse than it was when segregation took place. The gaps between the quality of education of white and black students receive appears to be growing instead of shrinking. The lack of quality education blacks receive has contributed to significant health differences between

Vanquishing new worlds, victors from the West acquired more than just land and subjects—they also gained sumptuous avowal of their creed of superiority, reinforced by the sight of foreign coloured people whom they perceive to be the object of their hegemonic motives. Securing their victory did not cost them more and more artillery. It was only a matter of influencing the ideology of the conquered people—a strategically optimised scheme of maintaining their dominance. The battles and the arm struggles may have ceased or diminished but the war of ideology versus ideology perpetuated. White supremacy, a racist ideology, was the conqueror's secret weapon that struck its victim unwary. It is a system of belief that places the white race above

Building wealth becomes increasingly unmanageable without steady employment, but the unemployment rate for people of color has been consistently twice that white people, regardless of the fluctuations in the economy. An education is a way to help you achieve that goal. However, the rate for unemployment for blacks with college degrees is twice as high to be unemployed than all other graduates, according to The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, a book published by Nancy DiTomaso, a professor of sociology, at Rutgers University who lectures inequality and organizational diversity. This is because applications with white-sounding names have a fifty percent chance higher than black sounding names to get callbacks, even when the resume does not change. Previous to the business opportunities, a person must obtain an education.