Get Herald RSSIn the 1954 ruling for Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was inherently unconstitutional. However, in 2007, America's public school system is still segregated by income and access to highly qualified teachers. According to the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, a federally funded laboratory, "There is a striking imbalance between the funds available to high-poverty schools and those serving more affluent areas." The effects of the inequality of funding available to schools are far-reaching and extremely negative. Numerous studies suggest that teachers and counselors who work in schools that receive less funding, as well as schools that are predominantly comprised of students of color, have lower expectations for their students.
The evidence suggests that Latino and African-American students are being punished with jail time due to an educational system that is obviously failing to meet their needs. According to Education Statistics Quarterly, Caucasian and Asian fourth-grade, eighth-grade and 12th-grade students score higher on reading exams than do African-American and Latino students. Across the three grades in 1998, between 39 and 47 percent of White students were at or above the proficient level, compared with 10 to 18 percent of African American students and 13 to 26 percent of Latino students. Poverty intensifies the education gap: The National Center for Children in Poverty reports that 61 percent of both Latino and African-American children are members of low-income families, compared to 26 percent of white children and 28 percent of Asian children. The combination of an inadequate education and poverty greatly restricts the opportunity for many students of color to lead successful and law abiding lives. In fact, according to a Washington Post op-ed by Andrew Block and Virginia Weisz, California state correctional officials use the percentage of children who read at a fourth-grade level or lower to help gauge the number of prison beds they will need in the future. California bases the policy on research that indicates that students who do not graduate are nearly four times more likely to be arrested than students who do. Thus, it should be no surprise that the Public Policy Institute of California reports that the state's male prisoners are 38 percent Latino and 27 percent African-American. To argue that equality and opportunity are alive and well in America is not only a tired statement, but an incorrect one as well.
Numerous programs have developed around the country to start meeting these children's needs, such as Breakthrough Collaborative and Teach for America, bring highly qualified and passionate teachers to low-income classrooms full of high-potential students. TFA is a two-year program that puts recent college graduates into poorly funded lassrooms. In 2004, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., a leading research firm, found that "TFA teachers make more progress in both reading and math than would typically be expected in a year." Similarly, Breakthrough Collaborative offers internships for high school and college students to teach low-income and high potential middle school students.
Breakthrough Collaborative and TFA are making large strides in closing the education gap in America. However, President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is a different story. NCLB was passed by Congress in 2002 - its supporters pledged to completely eliminate the education gap by 2014 and to have all children in the public education system to have "proficient" reading and math skills. The act gives parents more flexibility in choosing where their children go to school, increases the standards of accountability for state education systems by increasing testing and requires schools to distribute contact information to military recruiters in exchange for federal funding. According to the New York Times, since NCLB was implemented in 2002, the percentage of black eighth graders who read "proficiently" has dropped from 13 percent to 12 percent. Additionally, the number of poor eighth grade students who read proficiently has dropped from 17 percent to 15 percent. It is abundantly clear that NCLB is not on its way to meeting its goals by 2014.
The evidence suggests that programs which increase the amount of highly-qualified teachers in underserved classrooms are one of the most effective ways of closing the education gap. Eric Hanushek, Chairman of the Executive Committee for the Texas Schools Project at the University of Texas-Dallas, concluded that the quality of the teacher is a major factor in increasing student test scores. Robert Ferguson, senior lecturer at the London Institute of Education, found that teachers who scored higher on teaching exams were more likely to produce significant gains in student achievement than their lower scoring counterparts. The future of equality greatly depends on highly qualified teachers dedicating themselves to low-income areas and schools with high concentrations of students of color. A major factor preventing capable teachers from solving the education gap is the ridiculously small amount that most teachers earn. According to the American Federation of Teachers, the average teacher salary is about $47,000. Those qualified to close the education gap are also often qualified to take much higher paying corporate jobs, and they usually do. The future of our country's success depends on our ability to increase the amount of highly qualified teachers in the most underserved classrooms. In order to do so, we must stop expecting to imprison children who fall victim to a public education system rife with inequality and start spending more on recruiting highly qualified teachers to low-funded public schools.
Michael Ramos-Lynch '09 approved this message.
