10+ Links on Education Inequality

Here are some articles and videos I've found that relate to my project:

1. At 76, Jonathan Kozol is More Outraged Over Inequality Than Ever

This is an article about Jonathan Kozol, long-time education activist and author of multiple books on education inequality. Kozol is well into his seventies and still lecturing  and writing in the hopes that our education system will one day give students equal opportunity to succeed. 

Here's a quote from the article: 

"What's happening now in America, says Kozol, is "not even a pretense of a meritocracy." We are willfully condemning the futures of poor children in our society and, by scapegoating teachers and underfunding schools we're destroying public education. If that legacy of public education is lost, "that precious dream of Thomas Jefferson at his very best," says Kozol, "it will imperil our democracy."


2. Kalamazoo, Mich., the City That Pays for College

I read this article in the NY Times magazine a couple of weeks ago. In November 2005, some unnamed donors decided to pay tuition for Michigan's public colleges, universities and community colleges for students who graduated from the Kalamazoo, Michigan high schools. The program, called the  "Kalamazoo Promise", gives Kalamazoo teenagers hope for higher education. One in three Kalamazoo students lives below the national poverty line, and one in twelve are homeless. The Kalamazoo Promise is blind to family incomes, student grades and disciplinary and criminal records. The program requires families to reside in a Kalamazoo school district and graduate from a Kalamazoo high school. The hope is that families will live and work in Kalamazoo for longer, thereby boosting the local economy.


3. BoostUp

BoostUp is an organization dedicated to helping teens who are at-risk for dropping out of school the support they so desperately need to graduate. I've watched many of the videos on the site about student stories. As I watch these videos, I am reminded that these are just a handful of the adolescents in this country who are struggling to make ends meet. The site also provides statistics about dropout rates and ways for the average person to give these students a boost, whether it be by tutoring students after school, giving students resume and interview help, or donating to schools in need. 



4. The Opportunity Gap, by David Brooks

I read this article back in July. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam recently did a study on the socioeconomic gap in America by looking at opportunity inequality among children, the future of our nation. College-educated parents spend one hour more a day with their children. Upper-income parents have increased the amount of money they spend on their children's enrichment programs by $5,300 a year in the past forty years. Children from upper-income families are about twice as likely to play after-school sports and more than twice as likely to be captain of their teams. They are much more likely to participate in other extracurriculars. 

"Equal opportunity, once core to the nation’s identity, is now a tertiary concern. If America really wants to change that, if the country wants to take advantage of all its human capital rather than just the most privileged two-thirds of it, then people are going to have to make some pretty uncomfortable decisions."


5. Income Inequality and Educational Opportunity, by Laura D'Andrea Tyson

This September 2012 article includes some sobering statistics about the education gap in this country.

"The United States is caught in a vicious cycle largely of its own making. Rising income inequality is breeding more inequality in educational opportunity, which results in greater inequality in educational attainment. That, in turn, undermines the intergenerational mobility upon which Americans have always prided themselves and perpetuates income inequality from generation to generation.

This dynamic all but guarantees a permanent underclass. Indeed, the process is already under way: An American child’s future income is already more dependent on his or her parents’ income than a child born in most other developed countries."

6. 2011 Census: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States

Knowing the facts is the first step towards making a difference.

The 2012 census reports:

"Of the 20.4 million people with income below one-half of their poverty threshold, 7.3 million were children under age 18, 12.2 million were aged 18 to 64, and 940,000 were aged 65 years and older. The percentage of people aged 65 and older with income below 50 percent of their poverty threshold was 2.3 percent, less than one-half the percentage of the total population at this poverty level (6.6 percent)."

Here are some interesting graphs from the census report:

 

7. Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Show

Yet another article with startling statistics about the state of education inequality in America.

"One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.

A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent."

8. 20 Facts about U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know

Here are some great graphs with statistics about inequality in the United States. 

One important fact I learned:

"Only college graduates have experienced growth in median weekly earnings since 1979 (in real terms). High school dropouts have, by contrast, seen their real median weekly earnings decline by about 22 percent"

9. Why Education Inequality Persists- and How to Fix It

This article focuses on education inequality in New York City. 

"The real outrage, then, is not our vivid language but how education in New York City is more likely to reinforce existing patterns of inequality than to serve as a pathway to opportunity. It is as if New York is testing black, Latino and poor students on their swimming abilities after knowingly relegating them to pools where the water has been drained. These students are then stigmatized as failures, their parents labeled as less than fully engaged, and their teachers called ineffective. Ultimately, their community’s schools are closed rather than being supplied with the necessary resources and supports to flourish. One cannot ignore the impact of such policies and practices on the public image of blacks and Latinos males and the profiling that exists in our society."

10. Some informative and heart-wrenching videos about general socioeconomic inequality and education inequality:

Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
Inequality in the Public Education System
Disparity in Public Education Funding in America
Jonathan Kozol: Education in America (1 of 6) (Follow the related videos for parts 2-6)
This is America- Jonathan Kozol (Part 1 of 2)
Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty

Bursting Bubbles

As I look back on my Frisch career, I think about all of the times when I inadvertently made schoolwork harder for myself. I made a big deal about small assignments, left things to the last minute, and so on. Yet here I am, on the last leg of my journey through Frisch, purposefully making school more difficult. Why, you ask? I advise you to buckle your seatbelt, because this will blow you out of the water...

I want to actually learn something during my senior year. 

I know, I'm crazy. Feel free to mock.

Instead of combining my Tikvah paper with the Frisch LEADS project, I am leaning towards working on two totally different topics. Yes, I'll have more work, but I'm optimistic about how much I will learn in the process. 

And now (drum roll please), presenting what I hope will be my final topic: education inequality.

Over the past year, I have developed an interest in and a passion for education reform. One specific area in which I am interested is education inequality, particularly in urban school systems. I have been privileged to attend well funded private yeshiva day schools all my life. I have spent my days in beautiful facilities with high-tech classrooms and benefited from a plethora of enrichment programs and extracurricular activities. I have taken for granted things like adequate lighting, intact textbooks and exposure to the arts. The more I read about education, the more shocked I become. The gaps between private and public schools, and well funded public schools and under-funded public schools are extraordinarily wide! During my excursions into the large network of educators on twitter, Facebook and blogging sites, I have learned that this problem has existed for decades. For years and years, urban youth have been getting the short end of the stick. Education is of primary importance for youth living in urban areas, where there tends to be more violence, substance abuse and the like. Yet we've substantially reduced the chances that these young people will one day move up the socioeconomic ladder. We are prolonging-- possibly worsening-- the general socioeconomic rift in our country.

For my project, I want to thoroughly examine the state of American public education with an eye toward urban schools. I would like to look at issues that arise in these schools due to the socioeconomic standing of the students, as well as the amount of funding that the respective schools receive from the government. For part two of project, I want to find creative, implementable solutions to the problems I have explored. In terms of finding sources, I am planning to a read a book or two by Jonathan Kozol, an educator who has dedicated his life to acting and writing on behalf of inner-city students. Hopefully, his writings will give me an overview of the current situation, and perhaps some specifics. There are many other books, essays, articles and blog posts on this topic, so I don't think I will have a problem finding sources of information. In addition, I would love to visit an under-funded school in New York City and talk to students, teachers and administrators about their experiences with education inequality. As a final project, I'm thinking about starting Ramp It Up, a non-profit organization that Mrs. Wiener, Eddie Maza, and I have been planning to create. The organization would provide study help for AP students who do not have the resources that most private school students are fortunate enough to have- multiple review books, flashcards, lists and summaries given out by teachers, practice tests, etc. Hopefully, my understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of public education will inform how we structure the organization. 

People within the Jewish community often talk about the yeshiva day school "bubble". I consider myself to be a fairly open minded individual, generally knowledgable about issues that do not effect the Jewish community. Yet, I cannot deny the fact that growing up in the comfort of the Jewish day school system has made me virtually ignorant to the unique challenges of public education. Hopefully, this project can help me burst that bubble once and for all.