The Theory Of Educational Attainment Essay

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.

     Will Durant, a businessman and the founder of General Motors, once said, “Education is the transmission of civilization.” Unfortunately, education is still one of the most deliberated 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 funding while rich districts obtain more, creating an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas.

However, when a student wants to attend college after high school, the chances of going to any school of his or her choice can seem unfair and have unequal opportunity to other peers. Unfortunately the idea of being limited to attending certain schools has a big influence in chances of becoming successful. Even though higher educations seems to have a direct path for high wages, the access to college can have reverse effects on intergenerational mobility. By limiting access from someone in a bottom percentile to have the possibility to attend a good college harms their upward mobility. In efforts to help breakdown an understanding of how education affects intergenerational mobility, a study called Mobility reports cards show significant findings. Mobility reports cards were conducted by collecting administrative data from more then thirty million college students in the years of 1999-2013. “We obtain rosters of attendance at all Title-IV accredited institutions of higher education in the U.S using de-identified data from federal income tax returns combined with data from the National Student Loan Data System. We obtain information on students’ earnings in early adulthood and their parents’ incomes from tax records.”

In analyzing the discrepancies of degree completion and post-secondary enrollment of individuals within the Rio Grande Valley, we must also account for factors that can deter these individuals from

Document C is a speech made by a young African-American boy who is first in his class, during 1819, in New York City. He explains that even since he is genius he will have no future because of the color of his skin. According to Document C Note, it states, “ However, this was an improvement over the South where public schooling for white and free blacks was very limited, and where educating slaves was generally illegal.” Document C Note shows that black children in the North were given an opportunity at education allowing them to learn legally for the first time, while white boys in the South still could not go to school. Before the Civil War, many Northern schools for black children were segregated, but this was an improvement over the South

A point often overlooked by Owen and Sawhill is the topic of the rate of return on education- how much more earnings those who attended one more year of school received. By comparing identical twins with a difference in education level, records have sown that these earnings are increased by ten percent. They discuss that the “raw difference between high school graduates and associate’s degree holders is about $7,000, but a return of 10% would predict the casual effect of those additional two years to be $6,000” (210). Furthermore, the cost of college is also a vital factor; someone who has to pay a large amount in order to attend their college of choice will end up having a lower net benefit. When a young adult

In the article, “For the Poor, the Graduation Gap Is Even Wider Than the Enrollment Gap” by Susan Dynarski explains how the lower and upper class enroll in college at different rates, as well as graduate. A program was started known as the Educational Longitudinal Study. A study of dividing quartiles based on their parent’s educational background showed that parents with lower incomes were more likely to contain unskilled jobs compared to the higher income family containing manager positions. However, after 13 years, studies showed that only 14 percent of the less fortunate students and 60 percent of the fortunate students achieved their bachelors. By their late 20s tests also showed that 74 percent of wealthy students achieved their four-year

The affect of low socioeconomic status is still influential among high achieving students, with the likelihood of achieving a bachelor’s degree increasing with socioeconomic status on students that scored in the upper quartile of an eighth grade math exam (Lee et all., 2008). Race is still an indicator of academic achievement, but its direct and indirect effects are less strong (Lee et all., 2008). Students of majority race (White and Asian) complete high school at a rate of 93%, while students of the non-asian minority complete high school at a rate of 85% (Lee et all., 2008). The gap between students of differing socioeconomic status was far wider, of 44 percentage points, as compared to the gap between races and high school completion rates, which is 8 percentage points. Differences in gender also shows discrepancies, with 31% of females receiving at least a bachelor’s degree and only 26% of males receiving at least a bachelor’s degree.

Understanding-- a concept of comprehending derived mainly from how one sees and applies something they have learned to what they know. Not everyone understands absolutely everything; where some may understand one idea, another may not understand that idea, but fully understand another. This concept comes from how and what you were previously taught and how you apply your own particular sense of knowledge to situations. Understanding goes along with the essay, School by Kyoko Mori on how she expanded that satori, “enlightenment is considered to be beyond human description” is used in the Zen-style teaching method. Mori’s input and familiarity with the Zen-style teaching method follows truly with how David Sedaris in, Me Talk Pretty One Day, found his point of enlightenment. The marvelous feeling of reaching enlightenment comes purely from the effort and speed at which you perform a certain task; from understanding someone to mastering a skill, the end result marks a beneficial use of the time you put into that task.

Education is always indispensable, and every development comes from education. For example, the progression of manufacturing or devising the robot, phone and computer all establish in education. Without education, people could not have an advantageous life. In other words, the developments, convenient substances and achievements are from education. However, the society has been converting into complicated, and some inequalities and issues from education relate to income and the situation of families and communities which will beget achievement gap. For instance, The Facts about the Achievement Gap written by Diane Ravitch, mentions: “The children at the wrong end of the gap are likelier to attend schools in overcrowded classrooms with inadequate

Between 1990 and 2012, high school graduation rates in 25-29-year-olds have increased from 86 to 90 percent; this overall national rise is reflected in each of the ethnicities, White, Hispanic, Black, and Asian/Pacific Islander (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2013a). Prior to 2012, nationwide standardized objective measures did not exist for measuring four-year high school graduation rates; tracking educational progress varied from state to state. Thus, state education data collected from 1990-2012 are inaccurate as effective comparative groups unless knowledge of the state-specific previous methodologies is utilized (U.S. Department of Education, 2012a). Since 2012, the NCES, an entity within the Department of

We frequently find connections between socio-economic factors and educational outcomes. One of these connections entails an intersection between higher household income and attending university. While there have been many cases in which lower income households were able to put their children through college, attending university and having a higher income pretty much come hand in hand. This is merely a connection found not through necessity, but convenience.

The education in the United States today has main focuses, such as educational attainment, which is how far a student can get in school depending on family income and race/ethnicity. Family’s race and income can affect the possibility of someone’s attendance in college. The rate for dropouts in schools is highest for Latinos and Native Americans and lowest for Whites and Asians. As for income, families with high income are more likely to attend college than families with low income. Gender also effects educational attainment. There is a gender difference today that females are more likely than males to graduate high school, and finish college and obtaining a degree. The UnitedStates is considered a credential society, which indicates if a person has the knowledge, degree or skill

In Samuel Bowel’s and Herbert Gintis’ Education and Inequality, Bowels and Gintis investigate how education in the United States is unequal, especially to those indivduals who are financially unstable. In today’s extremely judgmental society, many are at a disadvantage based solely on their class, race, sex, etc. The quality of one’s education is compromised for a number of unfair reasons having to do with artificial inequalities.

The education system has been a controversial issue among educators. Requirements of school do not let student choose what they want to study for their future. It’s a big issue to force student study specific curriculums, which don’t help them improve, and what they like to create something. Educators choose a general system for education to all students which based on general knowledge. Intelligent or genius students have to be in that system of education, which doesn’t let them improve their creativity. Educators attempt to change that system to make it better, but their changing was not that great to be an example for the world. Also, did that change qualify education system to compete other systems or not? In some examples and