The Disparity in Education

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The Disparity in Education

Americans have a strong belief in the need for access to education. It is the tool that individuals use to transform their lives and access great opportunities. Society has made tremendous advances in realizing inequality in various aspects. There have been legislations such as Affirmative Action that have been instrumental in ensuring that everybody can access education. Though there have been steps to deal with disparities in education, a lot more effort needs to be exerted to deal with the issues. Minority communities have had difficulty accessing education due to the surrounding factors.

Thesis Statement: Education disparity is more often the result of some factors such as race, parental occupation and income, and gender discrimination.

Topic Sentence/Subtopic #1: Racism has been a social menace that has affected many areas of society and education is one of them. Racial disparity in education refers to the unequal platforms for accessing education. In that case, some races have the advantage of getting an education over others. The current education system tends to disadvantage certain ethnic and racial minorities, which can be proved by the existing experiences of racism among staff and students (Gillborn 8). Blacks were slaves and that placed them at a lower profile in the social ranking. They had difficult times accessing opportunities such as quality education. The 1800s were characterized by numerous laws that prohibited African Americans from accessing education. The rights of Blacks improved after the Civil War. After the 13th Amendment to the US constitution, which occurred in 1865, African Americans were lucky to receive the recognition of being citizens of America. During the period of Reconstruction, schools were established to educate slaves that had been freed.

Despite the development is educating the freed slaves in the 19th and 20th centuries, massive racial disparity in education has been still evident between Blacks and Whites. There was racial segregation such that Black students could only attend segregated schools (Smith 10). Despite the reforms that the government has put in place, the US still experiences racial disparity in education at all levels of education.

Topic Sentence/Subtopic #2: Another factor that education has been faced with inequity is parental occupations and incomes. Children from affluent families get a better education than children of poor parents. Whites enjoy higher graduation rates compared to Blacks and other minority communities. Whites have the economic capability to attend better schools that cannot be attended by most Blacks owing to the prevailing socio-economic situations (Gaydosh 109). The disparities exist in indicators such as disparities in exposure to racial-ethnic and economic segregation, disparities in participation and access to high-quality programs, disparities in the access to effective teaching, disparities in access to and enrollment in rigorous coursework (Smith 13). The disparity is termed as discrimination when students from the dominant community have a higher advantage than their counterparts to access quality education. The minority races as Blacks experience challenges in striving to strive the education. The blacks are disadvantaged in terms of accessibility to employment opportunities. That also translates to the ability to seek social services such as education and health. Children from families with low economic profiles are not able to get an education. That explains why graduation rates for students from low socio-economic backgrounds are low.

Topic Sentence/Subtopic #3: Gender inequality is still an issue in education today. There are serious gender gaps in education as girls lack the fair opportunity to acquire education (Baliamoune–Lutz and Mark 5). That arises due to factors such as early marriages, disability, minority status, poverty, gender-based violence, and geographical isolation. The US has made remarkable steps in addressing gender equality between 1970 and 2018. However, a slowdown has been notable in recent years prompting the need to initiate substantial cultural and institutional change.

Topic Sentence/Subtopic #4: There are remedies that can be initiated to deal with the disparity in education. First, the government needs to fix how it funds public schools. Funding should be directed towards helping minority communities such as blacks to escape barriers of poverty. Affirmative Action should be geared toward providing appropriate resources to schools that lag behind. Secondly, it is important to stop ranking and sorting students. Classifying students based on their perceived potential promotes racial biases. Next, there is the need to ensure that schools have a standard-based curriculum; all students should have the same pathways for learning. Next, society should promote diversity in terms of the culture and competence of teachers. That would ensure that learning institutions promote and appreciate all races, gender, and socioeconomic classes. There needs to be a change in institutional and cultural perspectives toward girls. That should be geared toward promoting education for women. The government should fund public education appropriately and selectively by maximizing the benefits for students from vulnerable families.

Conclusion: The American society has made tremendous steps in fighting the racial, economic, and gender disparity in education. Back in the 1800s, minority races never had the opportunity to seek education. The abolition of slavery saw the building of schools for blacks. In the 1960s, human rights activists led the world in realizing basic human rights such as education. Today, every American has the right to quality education regardless of race. However, there is a need to take measures to improve racial equity and equality in access to education. For the last 50 years, there has been tremendous development in addressing gender equality in issues such as education, employment, and representation. However, more effort needs to be applied to realize gender equity and address education for women. Income should not be a constraint to achieving quality education; the government should target poor families when funding education.

Works Cited

Baliamoune–Lutz, Mina, and Mark McGillivray. “The impact of gender inequality in education on income in Africa and the Middle East.” Economic Modelling 47 (2015): 1-11. https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.econmod.2014.11.031

Gaydosh, Lauren, et al. “College completion predicts lower depression but higher metabolic syndrome among disadvantaged minorities in young adulthood.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.1 (2018): 109-114. https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1714616114

Gillborn, David, et al. “Evidence for the commission on race and ethnic disparities.” (2021). http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3389/1/CRREBirmevidencetoCRED2020.pdf

Smith, Heather J. “The doublespeak discourse of the race disparity audit: An example of the White racial frame in institutional operation.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (2021): 1-15. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01596306.2021.1931035