American Education System: Economic And Social Inequality In Education

American Education System: Economic and Social Inequality in Education

Everyone knows that American society can present enormous inequalities, both economic and social. Recent studies show that 20% of the richest population controls 80% of total wealth. This economic crack can be seen in the unequal access in education, something we find from either early as in primary.

The American school system can highlight as the least egalitarian in the world. In fact, student’s possibilities are linked to the social state of the family. In addition, if we compare it with the rest of the countries that are part of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), an North American student who comes from a family with small income, will have less opportunities to access a quality university education that a child with a medium economic level in a European country.

We could say that students from well -off families have enough means to access courses that prepare you to enter the university, an important requirement in the process of admission of the US system. Therefore, it is not surprising that among the 146 best universities in the US. UU, only 10% of students are from the low middle class.

On the other hand, it should be noted that although each federal state finances private schools in a similar way, educational centers can complete this financing with their own funds. In this way, schools in rich areas are more likely to receive private funds than schools in poor regions or neighborhoods.

As is logical, higher income schools can hire better qualified teachers, offer updated materials and better equipped facilities, as well as many other benefits that affect students. Although states try to reduce these financing gaps, it is still difficult due to private contributions in public schools.

The education system in the United States is designed to see students as simple financial resources. Due to the high cost of a university education, holding student loan contracts with private institutions is a standard practice. In this way, we find great pressure on students, since the success of their projects and their careers depends on the payment of their debts.

This is one of the main reasons why many middle class students cannot pay this debt until they are 40 or 50 years old. This implies that they enter a spiral of debts, where it is difficult to improve the social status of the person and, as expected, this situation will affect the education of their children.

If we observe the study by Larry Bartels, Benjamin Page and Jaso Seawright, we can verify that 1% of the richest Americans believe that there are other more important aspects for finances than public education. However, it is these who have the resources to finance the education of their children, unlike middle class families. That is, if they depended on them, they would invest less in public education, and this reduction in public education would have catastrophic consequences for less favored social classes.

In addition everyone knows, or at least should know that education is an essential right and that all children must have the same opportunities to access quality education. Although the North American Educational System responds to the minimum training requirements, it is essential to increase public awareness about this existing economic gap and reduce its impact, so that future generations are not harmed.

To mitigate these differences, it is necessary for the country of the economy.

Another curious fact to take into account about inequality in American education is that students of minority groups are more likely to be suspended than white students.

It seems to be, since they begin school, already speaking even in preschool, black children are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended than whites. According to a report, although black girls only represent 20% of the female preschool population, they represent 54% of the suspensions. Black students are twice as probabilities to be expelled.

As we have said previously from the educational perspective, the differences in school results are not simply due to the economic or educational level of parents or the fact that immigrant children normally use the language of their country of origin in the home.

These factors, it points to a gap that already begins from the beginning in the school environment and the effort that is required for the poor children to compensate for this original disadvantage during primary school. This situation leads us to think that many other factors related to the dynamics of the school and the community itself intervene, such as the pedagogical climate in school, the norms and values ​​that teach in the community, as well as forms (generally involuntary ) of exclusion and discrimination inside and outside school.

The educational system is ‘segregated’ emperating from income, wealth and ending in the ethnicity of the students. He also explains that there are 10 million students in the poorest communities that are affected by a system that marginalizes them other higher quality practices, carrying them with lower performance teachers and schools, as well as with lower expectations and opportunities.

Education inequalities are key in the education system, because according to the Brookings Institute in a June 2013 study, a quality education is a way of transforming economic circumstances. That study explains that, although children from rich and poor families are born with similar skills, the richest parents invest more in their children, which increases the university educational gap and the possibilities of going to university.

Regarding the latter, Brookings tells us that ‘a university degree can be your passport to get out of poverty’: a low -income person without a title surely remains at the bottom of the social scale, while a person with low Income with higher studies can ‘easily’ reach even the highest levels of society, however, as we have observed in the study, university graduation rates have increased significantly for rich students, but for the poor, it has stagnated.

To conclude and although we have seen a lot of research that have documented how school culture places students of ethnic minorities at a disadvantage, we continue to see that few jobs have tried to suggest measures and actions so that these inequalities change in schools and thus turn them into egalitarian, respectful and committed to cultural and social diversity.

References

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2. Felton, r. (2016, June 12). In US schools, being black multiplies by four the probability of failure. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from https: // www.the newspaper.is/theguardian/school-eeu-multiplica-probability-Fracaso_0_525997731.HTML
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