Equal opportunity? What about the education system is Equal?

            By Joe Rodgers

          Education is so important in today’s world. it is taught to us at a young age to go to high school, graduate and then move on to the higher learning  whether it be trade school or a college education. Noticeably today not all children have the same opportunities as other have due to the lack of funds being received by lower income school district. Mainly the people who are suffering are African Americans and Hispanics who were born into these low-income areas. The video that we watched in class shows that we are so different when it comes down to the learning environments according to location to where people live.

          

           As you may have noticed in the video the curriculum in the higher income school consists of advanced classes that would better suit the college atmosphere such as advanced math, sciences and writing. Children with higher income backgrounds were more likely to be proficient on tasks of addition, subtraction, ordinal sequencing, and math word problems than children Where as in the lower income schools are being provided the bare minimum of these subjects. . Schools in low-income communities suffer from high levels of unemployment, migration of the best-qualified teachers, and low educational achievement. Only the select few ( if the classes are even provided at all) get to take advance placement classes that will better prepare them for higher learning. Yet, children in low-income schools are less likely to have well-qualified teachers. In fact, of high school math teachers in low-income school districts 27% majored in mathematics in college as compared to 43% of teachers who did so in more affluent school districts. So this leads us to ask what happens to the other students?

          These children that come from low-income areas acquire language are more at risk for reading disabilities and other learning disorders. Also these children entered high school 3.3 grade levels behind students from higher income schools. In addition, these students show that they have actually learned less over 4 years than children from higher income areas,. This means that children from lower-income groups finish high school 4.3 grade levels behind children who attend higher income schools. In 2007, the high school dropout rate among persons 16- 24 years old was highest in low-income families (16.7%) as compared to high-income families (3.2%) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008).

            This leaves us with the question why if education is so important why cant we present equal opportunity to everyone? well many people today may see this as a factor of racism just do to the fact that many of the lower income school districts  have higher populations of African Americans and Hispanic then the higher income school districts. Yet again it is not the fault of the children, it is because of the places they were born into. In my opinion the next Einstein could come from a lower income school district but would go unnoticed because of the fact that he is not getting the proper education that the higher income areas are getting.  Making equality amongst school districts would create further opportunity for children and could also further benefit this country.