American Education Week - Inequities in the Public School System
By Isha Sathe
As American Education Week comes around (November 14th - 18th), let’s take a look at the importance of education and some of the inequities we see in the system. The public education system has been around since the first colonies were established, but it wasn’t until the late 1800s and early 1900s that we started to see legislation requiring students to attend school (Chen, 2021). The public education system is so important because it develops a productive workforce, creates informed citizens, and provides social mobility.
Unfortunately, this access to education isn’t as equitable. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) was a landmark Supreme Court decision that established that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. While we have made significant progress since then, it seems that inequities are still devastatingly obvious. The government has pushed the responsibility of funding public schools toward the states and has contributed an insignificant portion. This neglect has a devastating effect on poor neighborhoods since they already have little in-state funding for their schools. Districts are responsible for the majority of public school funding (through avenues such as property taxes), so schools in communities with fewer funds have fewer resources. Furthermore, these districts are the ones that tend to need more help, and yet they have “fewer guidance counselors, tutors, and psychologists, lower-paid teachers, more dilapidated facilities and bigger class sizes than wealthier districts” (Semuels, 2016). From the 2021 census, it can be observed that “the poverty rate for Blacks and Hispanics is more than double that of non-Hispanic Whites” (Federal Safety Net, 2021). So while we have made steps to make sure that schools aren’t segregated we haven’t done even nearly enough to create a level playing field.
Correcting this system is essential to creating an equitable society and has shown to have great effects on our economy as well, “the estimates show that for every dollar the government spends on education, GDP grows on average by $20” (Carmignani, 2019). Let’s let education be an equalizer, setting students off at the same starting point and giving them a chance to reach their potential. Let’s invest in our future.
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