The Importance Of Education Disparity In Education

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

For generations African Americans have been disadvantaged in America and effects of these injustices have made a lasting impression. Education is one of the leading problems in the black community. Though there have many reforms in education over the years, racial injustices still exist because no attention in placed on how legislature affects people of color. I was raised in a middle-class family of educators. My entire life I’ve been told to “stay in school, get an education, and work hard so that you can beat the system.” Recognizing the structural forces in my life has helped me understand my place in society. Being able to “understand everyday life, not through personal circumstances but through the broader historical forces that

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as part of his “war on poverty” in hopes of closing the achievement gap between low income schools, which typically house larger percentages of student of color, and their more affluent counterparts. The act has been redefined and reauthorized every five years since its original enactment. However, despite the last 50 years of education reform, the disparity amongst high and low poverty schools is as large as it ever was. In turn, the disparity between students of color and white students has only grown. Clearly, the one size fits all approach to education America has been using does not work. The U.S public education system is broken and, as a country, very

The American education system is failing the generations of the future. Society neglects the children born into impoverished areas, while mainly white upper class children participate in superior educational activities. Low-income neighborhoods often produce schools with low scoring students. Therefore the government transitions these schools into impersonal factories. The phrase diversity masquerades the reality of re-segregation of schools. Many schools across the country are utilizing the phrase diversity, yet the statistics reveal that over ninety percent of the students are black or Hispanic. Creating successful environments is extremely difficult and subsequently results in serious consequences for the American education system.

The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the harsh truth of public school systems, and how they have become an isolation and segregation of inequality that students are subjected to; as a result, to receive an education. Throughout the essay, Kozol proves evidence of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face in the current school systems across the country. Kozol supports his testimony by providing the reader with factual statistics and percentages, of how segregated the public school systems have become within many major cities. He exposes the details and statistic of how wealthier schools received better funding and opportunity than the low-income and poverty struck school systems throughout the major cities across the country.

Ever since the establishment of equal education in the United States, there has been a disparity in academic success between children of different races. The education of African American children has become a prime example of this. As discussed in the historical text, A Letter to My Nephew, which was written during the time of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, African Americans were not given equal opportunities to succeed educationally and could do little to change their futures for the better. They had to work much harder than whites to receive even a portion of the recognition and success that whites achieved (Baldwin 1). Although many today believe America has overcome this problem, it still remains a pressing issue in many aspects of society, arguably the most important being education. The racial achievement gap, an important term to familiarize with when discussing this topic, refers to the disparity in educational performance between students of different races (National Education Association 1). As of now, although the education achievement gap has been narrowing, there still remains a large disparity between African Americans and their racial counterparts. According to a study by Roland G. Freyer and Steven D. Levitt, professors at Harvard University and W.E.B Du Bois Institute, respectively, African American students enter kindergarten already significantly behind children of other races, and their test scores continue to drop

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?

In the article “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Education Apartheid” author Jonathan Kozol informs us about inequality and segregation in today’s school systems. Kozol talks about schools were minority’s makes up the student body. For example, Kozol refers to John F. Kennedy High School where the majority of the student body is made up by African Americans and Hispanic students, only a third of the students are white. Kozol states that schools like these are typically underprivileged schools that normally have structural issues and also lack behind in technology and resources for students. Kozol also brings up the predominately white schools where on average there is more money spent on students and funding is not a problem, these

As I read about the achievement gap (Taylor), I felt a sense of despair. Families of color are positioned between a rock and a hard place. When children enter kindergarten, the racial gap is half of its ultimate size because many children of color do not participate in high-quality programs. How can people of color "catch up" to their counterparts when they are behind at the age of 5? There are also institutional factors that continue this achievement gap and perpetuate racism by consequence. After Brown v Board of Education (1954), white families enrolled their children in private and suburban schools. Since school busing has been discontinued, school assignments based on residential neighborhoods have created racially segregated schools.

The disparity facing African-Americans in education is cyclic in nature in that if a parent lacks the proper education required to possess a high earning power and as a result become another statistic of the lower class of the economy, hence being unable to provide their children with resources such as tutoring and other services that would help provide educational equity for them, these children are stuck lagging behind their upper-class peers that have access to these resources, leaving them with a lesser quality of education and limiting both their future earning power and their future children’s exposure to better educational resources, hence the cycle of educational disparity that plagues the African-Americans as a race.

It is to the advantage of everyone to be sure that all of our children are receiving a quality education no matter where they live. We need to start laying the foundations now for the black intelligentsia of the future. Those who came before us and who worked so hard to achieve an education under conditions and restrictions we can hardly imagine, expect nothing less from their descendants. Very little awaits a high school dropout except the underground economy of illegal activities and the increased risk of any early grave that comes as a consequence of that lifestyle.

Unequal educational opportunities for black students are a huge effect of racial segregation. Education has become a major problem dealing with racial segregation. Education is the foundation of literacy and success in America and African American students and schools are suffering. Schools in the U.S. are retracting back to segregation. As schools districts began to release schools from court order integration schools began to retract increasing test score disparities and national achievement gaps in large amounts not seen in four decades in the south. A national study conducted on the achievement gap between black and white students says “Nationally the achievement gap between whites and blacks during the integration period narrowed but as schools began to be released from court order integration schools became more segregated widening the achievement gap between black and white students” (Jones 1). Because of racial segregation the quality and access to education in African Americans is worsening over the years as school districts stop enforcing integration. But surprisingly, residential segregation has a big play in how well

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).

According to Nielsen (2013), in the United States, the government has been working hard in the due process of providing education to the children in the country. Despite the efforts that have been initiated by the United States education department, there is a problem of equity in education access around the nation. There are a good number of students who do not have the same opportunities as others when it comes to the education sector. For instance, in most cases, the quality of education that a student will get depends with their social class in the community. Those with a weak living condition are less likely to have the same quality of education as those who belong to the wealthy families. Therefore, the importance of equity, issues with sameness and the strategies suggested by Natalie (2013) and the report by the equity and excellence commission will form the basis of discussion for this paper.