America’s schools are not in a good place. This is worth being very clear about—just in case the Trump administration presents some of their “alternative facts” and tries to convince the American people otherwise. According to a report released on Thursday by the US Commission on Civil Rights, low-income black and Latino students end up in the worst schools—with the least amount of resources and the most damaged infrastructure.
Too often, low-income, black and Latino students end up in schools with crumbling walls, old textbooks and unqualified teachers, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The commission said inequities are caused by the fact that schools are most funded with state and local tax dollars. More than 92 percent of funding comes from nonfederal sources, according to the Education Department.
Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly news. Poor children who live in poor neighborhoods generally go to poor schools. And then they end up significantly behind compared to their peers in more affluent communities. Poverty and poor education significantly impacts behavior and academic performance, future employment opportunities, health outcomes and much more. This fact pretty much debunks the myth that hard work and education in themselves are enough to overcome anything in this country—especially poverty. As tempting as it is to buy into the myth that class and race are not determining factors for success and advancement, they absolutely are.
But in case you need more proof, numbers don’t lie. Less money is spent on children who live in high-poverty school districts and the curriculum and courses they are offered differs from their peers who come from more privileged economic backgrounds.
For instance, the authors [of the study] said, 33 percent of high schools with high black and Latino enrollment offer calculus, compared with 56 percent of high schools with low black and Latino student populations. Nationwide, 48 percent of schools offer the rigorous math course.
On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color, according the study.
Instead of working to fix our nation’s public schools, Betsy DeVos has championed vouchers to private schools and attendance at charter schools as a viable option. This is not a real fix for a system that has been broken for decades. If anything, this will only force children who attend neighborhood schools deeper into inequality. Instead, we need more funding to schools which are under resourced, better and safer school buildings and to recruit talented and highly qualified teachers into those districts.
The authors called on Congress to create incentives for states to adopt equitable funding systems, to ensure adequate funding for students with disabilities and to increase federal funding to supplement local dollars for school districts that are underfunded.
“The reality is that the United States does not offer the educational opportunity that is consistent with our ideals,” commission chair Catherine Lhamon told the AP. “That’s appalling and it’s dangerous and all of us need for it to change.”
None of this is necessarily an easy fix. But it must be done. We cannot sit by and let generation after generation of students of color languish in impoverished schools and then wring our hands and wonder why they aren’t doing better in life. Right now, we are doing nothing more than throwing these kids and their futures away. We need to get serious about addressing systemic inequality in this country and one place to start is our public schools.
It’s unconscionable that in the wealthiest country in the world, we refuse to invest in poor children. Research shows that highly skilled black and Latino children are locked out of pathways to careers as inventors and this has everything to do with socio-economic status. Turns out, we are not only failing those students, we are robbing ourselves of the potential of innovation in the process.