Effects of inequality and poverty vs. teachers and schooling on America’s youth (original) (raw)
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EDUCATION INEQUALITY: IS IT REALLY ABOUT THE CHILDREN LEARNING
Education Inequality is a huge problem that has plagued american society for years. Education is so important because it plays a key role in the work of public administration all across the board, from the janitors at the schools, to the superintendents who run the districts, and even the educators who teach the subject of public administration and those similar to the field. There are many issues that arise from education inequality, the different curriculum proposals to the shutting down of schools due to financial reasons. These issues create gaps in learning that american students have. This paper discusses the factors that come into play to create these gaps and the inequality in education such as: socioeconomic status, race/ ethnicity, the charter school dynamic, and the common core curriculum. Various interviews and scholarly journals are used as evidence for these factors.
Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform
Teacher's College Record, 2005
This analysis is about the role of poverty in school reform. Data from a number of sources are used to make five points. First, that poverty in the US is greater and of longer duration than in other rich nations. Second, that poverty, particularly among urban minorities, is associated with academic performance that is well below international means on a number of different international assessments. Scores of poor students are also considerably below the scores achieved by white middle class American students. Third, that poverty restricts the expression of genetic talent at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Among the lowest social classes environmental factors, particularly family and neighborhood influences, not genetics, is strongly associated with academic performance. Among middle class students it is genetic factors, not family and neighborhood factors, that most influences academic performance. Fourth, compared to middle class children, severe medical problems affect impoverished youth. This limits their school achievement as well as their life chances. Data on the negative effect of impoverished neighborhoods on the youth who reside there is also presented. Fifth, and of greatest interest, is that small reductions in family poverty lead to increases in positive school behavior and better academic performance. It is argued that poverty places severe limits on what can be accomplished through school reform efforts, particularly those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The data presented in this study suggest that the most powerful policy for improving our nations' school achievement is a reduction in family and youth poverty.
2002
This research report is part of a series entitled IN PURSUIT OF BETTER SCHOOLS: WHAT RESEARCH SAYS that is supervised by Bruce J. Biddle and David C. Berliner and supported by The Rockefeller Foundation. The series provides timely and trustworthy summaries of research on major issues facing education today, with special emphasis on how America's poor and minority students are affected by educational policies. Each report in the series reviews and evaluates research and scholarship on a specific topic and concludes with recommendations based on research knowledge available at the time of writing.
Fifty Years since the Coleman Report: Rethinking the Relationship between Schools and Inequality
In the half century since the 1966 Coleman Report, scholars have yet to develop a consensus regarding the relationship between schools and inequality. The Coleman Report suggested that schools play little role in generating achievement gaps, but social scientists have identified many ways in which schools provide better learning environments to advantaged children compared to disadvantaged children. As a result, a critical perspective that views schools as engines of inequality dominates contemporary sociology of education. However, an important body of empirical research challenges this critical view. To reconcile the field's main ideas with this new evidence, we propose a refraction framework, a perspective on schools and inequality guided by the assumption that schools may shape inequalities along different dimensions in different ways. From this more balanced perspective, schools might indeed reproduce or exacerbate some inequalities, but they also might compensate for others—socioeconomic disparities in cognitive skills in particular. We conclude by discussing how the mostly critical perspective on schools and inequality is costly to the field of sociology of education.
American Journal of Sociology, 1973
This book is an example of a new activity among social scientists. The activity has two components. The first, less new than the second, but important in the development of social research, is its focus on what might be termed "macrosocial research.') What I mean by macrosocial research is that the parameters estimated characterize a well-defined population, such as the U.S. population of a particular age range. Such research can do more than examine intraindividual processes, as much survey research has been confined to. ("Persons who are higher in X tend also to be higher in Y.") I t can, in its analysis, examine the functioning of social institutions through which that population passes. Demographers and sociologists concerned with occupational mobility have been doing this for some time, but it is only very recently that research involving education has begun to participate in macrosocial research. As the research on representative samples of the U.S. population or on representative samples of U.S. institutions of a particular sort (e.g., schools or hospitals) increases, the scope of macrosocial research will become broad enough to allow extensive quantitative studies of the U.S. social structure. The second component of this new activity, made possible by the existence of macrosocial research, is the bringing together of research results and reanalysis of data from a number of sources, all characterizing the same population, to draw implications for social policy. An earlier, but much smaller attempt in the same genre was the "Moynihan Report," a paper that drew together statistics on unemployment and AFDC payments to argue that the primary problem among blacks was a problem of employment of black males, and the primary solution lay in increasing their employment levels (Moynihan 1965). This book is more ambitious but more confused in purpose. I t brings together (1) research on the effect of family background, school resources, and IQ on cognitive achievement in school and on years of school completed; (2) research on the effect of cognitive achievement, years of school completed, and family background on occupational prestige and income; and (3) a variety of other statistics, including the average years of school completed and the inequality in school completion, over a period of years, and the average level of income and the inequality of income, again over a period of years.
Responding to Educational Inequality
2017
This report takes up a critical issue in education: the continuing reproduction of educational inequality in relation to race and social class. In doing so, it highlights several key issues in how we study and attempt to ameliorate disparities through educational policy. We conclude with a set of recommendations for policymakers and advocates. A Plan to Respond Educational policy interventions can improve educational opportunity: è Craft and invest in policies that acknowledge and address the impact of economic, racial, and social forces on students and schools è Ensure schools and educational reforms are sufficiently and equitably funded è Utilize rigorous, systematic and ecologically valid research from various sources and methodological approaches to develop policies and to evaluate their impact and implementation è Enable the development of equitable, robust environments through professional development è Re-frame the research focus to capture the varied, rich, and consequential practices of non-dominant communities to build equitable, evidence-based policy è Educational policy perpetuates inequity through fiscal disinvestment, a neglect of the broad sociopolitical structure, the application of universal interventions, and the usage of a narrow research base Growing inequality, re-segregation, and structural racism pose fundamental challenges to America's schools and its ideals of democracy and equity. Educational policy perpetuates inequity through fiscal disinvestment, a neglect of the broad sociopolitical structure, the application of universal interventions, and the usage of a narrow research base. Educational policy can mitigate educational inequities. Local practices undermine educational equity by limiting student access to robust learning environments through segregation and tracking practices. Racial biases held by teachers and leaders are enacted in classrooms and can impair deep learning and engagement for all students.
American Journal of Sociology, 1973
This book is an example of a new activity among social scientists. The activity has two components. The first, less new than the second, but important in the development of social research, is its focus on what might be termed "macrosocial research.') What I mean by macrosocial research is that the parameters estimated characterize a well-defined population, such as the U.S. population of a particular age range. Such research can do more than examine intraindividual processes, as much survey research has been confined to. ("Persons who are higher in X tend also to be higher in Y.") I t can, in its analysis, examine the functioning of social institutions through which that population passes. Demographers and sociologists concerned with occupational mobility have been doing this for some time, but it is only very recently that research involving education has begun to participate in macrosocial research. As the research on representative samples of the U.S. population or on representative samples of U.S. institutions of a particular sort (e.g., schools or hospitals) increases, the scope of macrosocial research will become broad enough to allow extensive quantitative studies of the U.S. social structure. The second component of this new activity, made possible by the existence of macrosocial research, is the bringing together of research results and reanalysis of data from a number of sources, all characterizing the same population, to draw implications for social policy. An earlier, but much smaller attempt in the same genre was the "Moynihan Report," a paper that drew together statistics on unemployment and AFDC payments to argue that the primary problem among blacks was a problem of employment of black males, and the primary solution lay in increasing their employment levels (Moynihan 1965). This book is more ambitious but more confused in purpose. I t brings together (1) research on the effect of family background, school resources, and IQ on cognitive achievement in school and on years of school completed; (2) research on the effect of cognitive achievement, years of school completed, and family background on occupational prestige and income; and (3) a variety of other statistics, including the average years of school completed and the inequality in school completion, over a period of years, and the average level of income and the inequality of income, again over a period of years.
Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2012
Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers, and the promotion of competition are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school than those from more advantaged families. Because these policy initiatives do not directly address the educational challenges experienced by disadvantaged students, they have contributed little-and are not likely to contribute much in the future-to raising overall student achievement or to reducing achievement and educational attainment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Moreover, such policies have the potential to do serious harm. Addressing the educational challenges faced by children from disadvantaged families will require a broader and bolder approach to education policy than the recent efforts to reform schools.
The international and comparative education literature is not in agreement over the role of schools in student learning. The authors reexamine this debate across 25 diverse countries participating in the fourth-grade application of the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The authors find the following: (a) In most cases, family background is more important than schools in understanding variations in student performance; (b) schools are nonetheless a significant source of variation in student performance, especially in poor and unequal countries; (c) in some cases, schools may bridge the achievement gap between high and low socioeconomic status children. However, schools' ability to do so is not systematically related to a country's economic or inequality status.