Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say
see the article here
Recent studies at Stanford university have shown that there is an increasing gap for success amongst students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In a country that emphasizes equality and pursuit of happiness for all, you would think that the opportunity to receive an education would be more about choice than how much money you have.
I understand that within the last 15 years there have been dramatic budget cuts to education that have made it almost impossible for students to learn. Elementary school students now share books in class. When I was in elementary school I did not have to share a book nor did I have to pay for lunch because there were financial assistance programs that my family was able to take advantage of. I have met people with children that not only have to pay for their children's lunch but also have to pay for transportation even if it is on a school bus.
I am not saying that it is the communities' responsibility to pay for all student's educations but for those who cannot afford it, what CAN be done? Simply put, I think it is very important that anyone who seeks an education should be able to get one regardless of how much money they have accessible from their family or from their job. I think it is definitely important that government officials take this into consideration.
Qoute from the article:"The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.”
Do you think the majority of America really cares? Listening to the GOP debates it seems like we care about 3 things, our taxes, having a really really big army, and the candidates personal lives. We want to pay less and get more. Our presidents solution "bring manufacturing back to America!" Not the prestigious work environment most college kids want to work at...
ReplyDeleteI think the issue transcends politics. I posted on this same article on my blog -- conservatives want to blame the breakdown in family and traditional values, liberals want to throw money at the problem. I think Jeff's final quote -- that no one knows what will work -- is the most important part of the article. Here's my post:
ReplyDeleteAt least that's my conclusion from reading two articles in today's New York Times. The first, on the front page, argues that income affects educational achievement more than race does. Here's an excerpt:
It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.
Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.
“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.
In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.
The second, an op-ed piece by Paul Krugman, tries to assess the state of affairs for white working class families, in particular white male high school graduates. His findings are daunting:
Still, something is clearly happening to the traditional working-class family. The question is what. And it is, frankly, amazing how quickly and blithely conservatives dismiss the seemingly obvious answer: A drastic reduction in the work opportunities available to less-educated men.
Most of the numbers you see about income trends in America focus on households rather than individuals, which makes sense for some purposes. But when you see a modest rise in incomes for the lower tiers of the income distribution, you have to realize that all — yes, all — of this rise comes from the women, both because more women are in the paid labor force and because women’s wages aren’t as much below male wages as they used to be.
For lower-education working men, however, it has been all negative. Adjusted for inflation, entry-level wages of male high school graduates have fallen 23 percent since 1973. Meanwhile, employment benefits have collapsed. In 1980, 65 percent of recent high-school graduates working in the private sector had health benefits, but, by 2009, that was down to 29 percent.
So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. Yet somehow we’re supposed to be surprised that such men have become less likely to participate in the work force or get married, and conclude that there must have been some mysterious moral collapse caused by snooty liberals. And Mr. Murray also tells us that working-class marriages, when they do happen, have become less happy; strange to say, money problems will do that.