Graduation rates plummet as public and urban schools have a
harder and harder time providing for its students. The outcome of solutions
proposed by wealthy and powerful adults on poor minority students causes students
to suffer in school. Society is not
blind to the differences that have worsened the gap between wealthy schools and
poor schools. From the book Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the film
Waiting for ‘superman’, to presidents and public figures like Bill Gates and
Michell Rhee. People have been trying to solve the problems in our education
system for decades. Most Americans would agree you need money to be on top in
this country. What they don’t know is that the wealthy are pushing the poor
further underneath them to get there. The people trying to make a change are
the ones with true compassion and empathy. There the true voices of children
who have no choice in how money is spent on their education, and there future.
With a lack of funding for low achieving schools , a lack of proper materials,
and graduation rates dropping in our country, it’s a wonder where the future
will lead America as a whole.
Public schools in
the United States have changed from being segregated with hammy down books in
the 1940s, but the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree when it comes to
’reformed’ public schools in lower classed areas. The conditions and locations of these schools
have not changed much. Possibly, they may even have gotten worse. Countless
adults with power and right minds have tried to bring equality between poor
lower classed students and wealthy ones, but what it comes down to, is the
decisions made by the ones with the most power. From countless presidents, to
the teachers union, all have tried to solve problems in the education system by
possibly making them worse. In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act was put into
effect. This Act put in place Standardized testing for students to determine their
grade level. In order to receive federal funding, public schools must subject
there students to these tests and ensure they pass with high scores. This has a
negative effect on students, especially in lower class schools lacking good
teachers who perform well, materials, and in worse case scenarios, nice
buildings. If the test results show the school is not improving, funding is
decreased. That is unequal in comparison to wealthier schools that have more than
their fair share of wealth to make it safely through school, without
repercussions. Supporters of this act feel that a ‘punishment’ as in less
funding for low scoring schools will send a message to teachers. That somehow,
this message will help them form a better understanding of how important the
education system is. However, the schools that are doing poorly will continue
to do poorly, if not get worse test scores because of a lack in funding. The
children are already at a disadvantage and unprepared for these tests from
kindergarten to high school. Whereas wealthier schools that already have the
means to prepare their students for these tests, will be further boosted above
in society. The public schools at this rate will continuously be pushed down in
the nation as a whole. “No head start and they think that they can test our
children into mechanical proficiency”. PG 143, Savage Inequalities. Children in
poorer, lower class communities are given no boost when it comes to these
tests. They lack smaller class sizes, common materials, fully functioning
buildings, books and other basic supplies wealthy children automatically have a
given right to. Yet most minority children have to struggle for themselves
alone.
Going to school every
day and no being able to learn new things or reach your full potential because
your school can’t afford its own supplies can’t possibly give any child a
brighter outlook on their future. These students aren’t blind or ignorant to
what’s going on around them, they even grasp an understanding of how bad it is.
The children of East St. Louis attending lower public schools know much more
about reality then perhaps parents and teachers would like to believe. “They
don’t comment on it but you see it in their eyes. They understand.” (Kozol 88). A teacher who works in a school located next door to a
funeral home, talks about the students having a grasp on what suburban schools
look like. The school she works in used to be a roller-skating rink. The rooms
are overcrowded and flooded with students in comparison to suburban classrooms.
The number of teachers to a room is grossly outnumbered. With so many children,
the lack of materials is extremely unequal. The local school board is said to
have given an equal number of computers to each school. With almost 60 children
in this minority classroom vs. 20 in a suburban class, this distribution is
clearly unequal. This lack of equality in schools, material shortage, and poor
test scores creates persistently low-achieving schools. These students are at a
constant disadvantage and it’s not their choice. The government puts out one
flyer about other schools and expects parents to read it, they don’t have the money
to move out of the area and attend suburban schools, where suburban parents
don’t even want them there with their children.
Becoming a higher achieving school is
virtually impossible with a lack of proper funding. Its difficult for students
to prepare for standardized testing with paper, pens, lab equipment, adequate
books, and computers being scarce and rare to say the least. A teacher working
in an Oakland CA community college has said in an interview for an online
article about the lack of school materials, that she has started spending her
own money to provide her students with simple resources like paper and pens.
Its almost a cycle. Children in schools that lack books because of funding
cannot properly study for the standardized tests. Pushing out low test scores
as a whole, the schools funding is lowered even further. No materials, no
learning, no hope for the future. Having equal funding in schools as an attempt
to close the education gap between poorer minority schools and wealthier ones, does
not solve an unequal problem. Besides the fact that low funding school would
possibly need over two thirds the amount wealthy schools get to even catch up.
The adults who created standardized testing and put the No Child Left Behind
Act in place have never enrolled themselves or their own children into a low
achieving minority public school, in a poor neighborhood.
It was my personal understanding of a select
chapter in the book Savage Inequalities, that most students attending school in
the East St. Louis area, as early as middle school to the beginning of high
school, have given up and accepted the future the governor has practically handpicked
for them. “There is no natural way (that) East St. Louis can bring itself out
of this situation” Governor Thompson (Kozol 24). He stated that
he believes the money going into East St. Louis isn’t being spent on what it
needs to be spent on. These students, as well as all students on earth, deserve
the right to equal opportunity in education. Damage, however, has already been
done to high schools in East St. Louis. One teacher notes that in 23 years he
has seen two students graduate despite the schools circumstances. The rest have
either failed, become pregnant or dropped out way before senior year . It is
not the bad neighborhoods that these students are living in, that create a
distressing environment for learning to become impossible, if anything the high
rate of high school dropouts create bad neighborhoods. With a larger minority
population over the wealthy, the look on our future grown citizens in the
workforce is very bleak. These dropout rates will never create jobs and solve
Americas problems in the educations system.
According to the documentary, Waiting for
‘Superman’, a child who doesn’t graduate high school will earn less and most
likely end up in prison. A lack of school funding isn’t the only reason a
students might not graduate high school. Tenure is a law that assures even the
worst performing teachers a ‘job for life’. It was created by the teachers
union for teachers who were losing there job to relatives of school boards, and
teachers who took to political beliefs parents didn’t want in the classroom.
“This is the future of this nation”, Jeff Bliss transcript. Jeff bliss has the
right idea about the way a good teacher needs to be. “What you need to do…you
gotta make ‘em excited…you gotta touch his freaking heart”. This situation,
although isolated and recorded by a student, is not by any means uncommon in
public schools. The students are bored, sitting in class, and only reading
pages upon pages of text, practically teaching themselves. Once again these may
even be government mandated packets given to teachers so that students may
complete them. Even if that is so, it is the teachers duty to ensure these
students are learning and understanding in the classroom. Students in lower
achieving schools have no choice but to attend classes being taught by bad
teachers. The teachers union prohibits the firing of bad teachers who have Tenure.
These are teachers who are low performing, are not engaging or even caring for
there students. “1 out of 57 doctors loses his or her license to only 1 out of
1000 teachers is fired for performance…” , Waiting for ‘superman’. These
teachers with tenure very rarely lose there teaching credentials, and cannot be
fired. What so what the public schools have come up with is called the ‘dance
of the lemons’. Bad teachers are bounced and traded from school to school in
the hopes that the teacher they end up with is less of a failure then the last.
Firing a teacher is just about as difficult as getting a divorce, only more
impossible. Tenure is less about creating good students and keeping jobs for
good teachers, as it is about the adults and their money.
The adults with the
most power, which are in charge of funding public schools, choose which are
successful and which are not. The only way students are given a second chance
at their education, is by taking the same chance as winning the lottery,
literally. Students are entered into a lottery by name and a number. If there
number is chosen by random, the student is allowed a space in a nicer school, a
charter school, with better teachers, nicer buildings, and school supplies. All
these children have dreams, and hopes for a better future. They want to become
doctors, nurses and even teachers themselves. They will have no chance in these
fields unless they are given a better education.
Some people argue that money isn’t the problem
with these schools and the education system, that money is not the solution. If
that was true, why are the most powerful also the wealthiest? Why are these
wealthy white adults not distributing money equally to schools that need it the
most? The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That’s the way the system
works for the wealthy. That’s the way the rich and powerful want it to be, a
lesser education for the ones who are lesser then them.
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