Educational inequality
Encyclopedia
Educational inequality occurs where the quality of education
available to pupils is closely related to their social class
or status. A common view among scholars addressing this topic is that rather than succeeding in reducing societal inequality, schools and other educational establishments to some degree perpetuate class and race boundaries. Disparate allocation of resources to children with different socioeconomic status
backgrounds has been linked to lower test scores and low enrollment rates in tertiary education
.
In the United States
, school quality and availability of resources are determined by the amount of funding that schools receive. The amount of funding schools receive is determined to a large extent by property tax
es paid by home owners; close to half of property taxes go to nearby school districts.
.
refers to the movement in class status from one generation to another. It is related to the "rags to riches" notion that anyone, with hard work and determination, has the ability to move upward no matter what background they come from. Contrary to that notion, however, sociologists and economists have concluded that, although exceptions are heard of, social mobility has remained stagnant and even decreased over the past thirty years. Some of the decrease in social mobility may be explained by the stratified educational system. Since the educational system forces low-income families to place their children into less-than-ideal school systems, those children are typically not presented with the same opportunities and educational motivation as are students from well-off families, resulting in patterns of repeated intergenerational educational choices for parent and child, also known as decreased or stagnant social mobility
.
and tracking
further manage to separate those with higher level skills from those with lower level skills, which often happens to be the rich from the poor. In fact, the vast majority of children in gifted student programs happen to be middle-class Caucasians. This is not to say that poor students are not as smart as rich students, but it does imply that they have not received the same opportunities in childhood to develop certain skills. Middle and upper class students grow up with parents who foster their intellectual and educational development by engaging in a child raising approach known as concerted cultivation. This approach values education and learning, and parents engaged in this form of parenting value visits to the museum, extracurricular activities, homework, tutoring, and reading to their children. Furthermore, middle and upper-class parents can afford to place their children in significantly better childcare centers before they enter grade school. As the Carolina Abecedarian Project found, these are essential elements in future educational and life successes.
Evidence for the unequal distribution of college students' socioeconomic status
can be seen by examining college enrollment rates and demographics. One study examined the top 146 colleges in the U.S. and found that the average student representation on the colleges was the following: 75% of students came from socioeconomic backgrounds consistent with the richest 25% of the population. Less than 5% of students came from the poorest 25% of the population.
, when he announced in 2004 that Harvard would provide full scholarships to its neediest students:
Although a noble idea, Summers’ promise to aid low-income students entering college is flawed in the sense that the attempt to push students into higher education
needs to occur significantly earlier than high school. Some studies have shown that early educational intervention in low-income children as early as preschool has yielded phenomenal results in college enrollment and graduation compared to their non-intervention peers.
and Amherst College
have created programs that provide education free or low cost to low-income students, and like Harvard, the rates at which low-income students apply have not increased significantly. Similarly, the establishment of community colleges is one such attempt at providing low-cost education to low-income students; however, contrary to their ultimate goal, as well as the goal of those who enroll, transferring to four-year institutions is not usually the end product. Of those who entered community college transfer programs in the mid-90s, only about 17% transferred in five years.
What these findings suggest is that perhaps another factor determines college attendance and overall success. The Carolina Abecedarian Project at the Frank Porter Graham Institute of Child Development at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has attempted to identify that factor in a longitudinal study continued over 21 years.
Results were assessed in three follow-up studies at age 12, 15, and 21, and revealed remarkable results. Not only did the intervention group maintain higher test scores throughout the years in math and reading, but the rate at which they graduated high school, entered college, waited to have their first child, and made overall positive life choices was far higher than for their non-intervention peers. Furthermore, the mothers of the intervention children were more likely to obtain higher education themselves, especially the teen mothers. Researchers suggest that early enhanced development of language “appears to have been instrumental in raising cognitive test scores”.
What we can infer from these results is that five years of extensive quality care for children beginning in infancy yields results that begin to close the gap between children of the rich and children of the poor, as earlier mentioned by Summers. However, rather than providing that low-cost education in college, the care needs to be provided in early childhood to set a foundation for the value of education that will remain with the child throughout life.
. The ultimate end result of such a reality would be that the widely stratified educational system that exists in the U.S. today would begin to equalize so that every child born, regardless of socioeconomic status
, would have the same opportunity to succeed. Many European countries are already exercising such successful educational systems.
is one such system that attempts to equalize students and make sure every child has an equal chance to succeed. Some ways that Sweden is accomplishing these goals is by making sure every child can go to daycare affordably. Of the total cost of childcare, parents pay no more than 18% for their child; the remaining 82% is paid for by various government agencies and municipalities. In 2002, a “maximum-fee” system was introduced in Sweden that states that costs for childcare may be no greater than 3% of one’s income for the first child, 2% for the second child, 1% for the third child, and free of charge for the fourth child in pre-school. 97.5% of children age 1-5 attend these public daycare centers. Also, a new law was recently introduced that states that all four and five year old children can attend day care for free. Since practically all students, no matter what their socioeconomic background, attend the same daycare centers, equalization alongside educational development begins early and in the public sphere. Furthermore, parental leave consists of 12 months paid leave (80% of wage) whereas one month is awarded solely to the father in the form of “use it or lose it.” This results in the privilege and affordability of staying home and bonding with one’s child for the first year of life. Due to this affordability, less than 200 children in the entire country of Sweden under the age of 1 are placed in child care.
Stratification in the educational system is further diminished by providing all Swedish citizens and legal residents with the option of choosing which school they want their children to be placed in, regardless of what neighborhood they reside in or what property taxes they pay. Additionally, the Swedish government not only provides its citizens with a free college education, but also with an actual monthly allowance for attending school and college.
Together, these privileges allow for all Swedish children to have access to the same resources. A similar system can be found in France, where free, full-day child care centers known as "ecoles maternelles" enroll close to 100% of French children ages 3–5 years old. In Denmark, children from birth to age six are enrolled in childcare programs that are available at one-fifth the total costs, where the rest is covered by public funding.
for better comparison of inequality in education between countries visit: http://www.education-inequality.com/
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
available to pupils is closely related to their social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
or status. A common view among scholars addressing this topic is that rather than succeeding in reducing societal inequality, schools and other educational establishments to some degree perpetuate class and race boundaries. Disparate allocation of resources to children with different socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation...
backgrounds has been linked to lower test scores and low enrollment rates in tertiary education
Tertiary education
Tertiary education, also referred to as third stage, third level, and post-secondary education, is the educational level following the completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school, secondary school, university-preparatory school...
.
In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, school quality and availability of resources are determined by the amount of funding that schools receive. The amount of funding schools receive is determined to a large extent by property tax
Property tax
A property tax is an ad valorem levy on the value of property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state or a municipality...
es paid by home owners; close to half of property taxes go to nearby school districts.
Property tax dilemma
The more affluent a neighborhood, the higher the property taxes, and the higher the funding for that school district. Although this situation seems favorable, the problem emerges when the equation is reversed. In neighborhoods inhabited by predominantly working and lower class families, properties are less expensive, and so property taxes are much lower than those in affluent neighborhoods. Consequently, funding for the school districts to which working and lower class children are assigned is also significantly lower than the funding for the school districts to which children of affluent families are assigned. Thus, students in working and lower class schools do not receive the same quality of education and access to resources as do students from affluent families. The reality of the situation is that distribution of resources for schools is based on the socioeconomic status of the parents of the students. As a result, the U.S. educational system significantly aids in widening the gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has increased, rather than decreased, over the past few decades due in part to a lack of social mobilitySocial mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
.
Wage gaps
Wage gaps for paid work is one example of disadvantage and oppression based on gender. Although the differences are improving, issues still persist in the United States and across the globe.Social mobility
Social mobilitySocial mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
refers to the movement in class status from one generation to another. It is related to the "rags to riches" notion that anyone, with hard work and determination, has the ability to move upward no matter what background they come from. Contrary to that notion, however, sociologists and economists have concluded that, although exceptions are heard of, social mobility has remained stagnant and even decreased over the past thirty years. Some of the decrease in social mobility may be explained by the stratified educational system. Since the educational system forces low-income families to place their children into less-than-ideal school systems, those children are typically not presented with the same opportunities and educational motivation as are students from well-off families, resulting in patterns of repeated intergenerational educational choices for parent and child, also known as decreased or stagnant social mobility
Social mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
.
Other factors
Social immobility expresses itself in lower class children who follow in the same path as their parents, mainly not obtaining higher education. The result of such choices is that the poor remain poor and the rich go to college. Reasons for poor children opting to not pursue higher education range across a variety of different explanations. Lower class children have not grown up with the same expectations of life because these have not been instilled in them by their parents, or most importantly, by the educational system. The U.S. educational system fails its lower-income students by not providing them with the same access to resources and opportunities as it does to its more affluent students. Furthermore, several studies have shown that programs such as gifted educationGifted education
Gifted education is a broad term for special practices, procedures and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented...
and tracking
Tracking (education)
Tracking is separating pupils by academic ability into groups for all subjects or certain classes and curriculum within a school. It may be referred as streaming or phasing in certain schools. In a tracking system, the entire school population is assigned to classes according to whether the...
further manage to separate those with higher level skills from those with lower level skills, which often happens to be the rich from the poor. In fact, the vast majority of children in gifted student programs happen to be middle-class Caucasians. This is not to say that poor students are not as smart as rich students, but it does imply that they have not received the same opportunities in childhood to develop certain skills. Middle and upper class students grow up with parents who foster their intellectual and educational development by engaging in a child raising approach known as concerted cultivation. This approach values education and learning, and parents engaged in this form of parenting value visits to the museum, extracurricular activities, homework, tutoring, and reading to their children. Furthermore, middle and upper-class parents can afford to place their children in significantly better childcare centers before they enter grade school. As the Carolina Abecedarian Project found, these are essential elements in future educational and life successes.
Evidence for the unequal distribution of college students' socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation...
can be seen by examining college enrollment rates and demographics. One study examined the top 146 colleges in the U.S. and found that the average student representation on the colleges was the following: 75% of students came from socioeconomic backgrounds consistent with the richest 25% of the population. Less than 5% of students came from the poorest 25% of the population.
Importance of early educational intervention
Some universities across the United States have sworn to aid their low-income students. The following was said by Lawrence H. Summers, President of Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, when he announced in 2004 that Harvard would provide full scholarships to its neediest students:
- “We need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor. Education is the most powerful weapon we have to address that problem”
Although a noble idea, Summers’ promise to aid low-income students entering college is flawed in the sense that the attempt to push students into higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
needs to occur significantly earlier than high school. Some studies have shown that early educational intervention in low-income children as early as preschool has yielded phenomenal results in college enrollment and graduation compared to their non-intervention peers.
Failure of low-cost alternatives
Similar systems as the one established at Harvard have yielded less-than-promising results. The University of VirginiaUniversity of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
and Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
have created programs that provide education free or low cost to low-income students, and like Harvard, the rates at which low-income students apply have not increased significantly. Similarly, the establishment of community colleges is one such attempt at providing low-cost education to low-income students; however, contrary to their ultimate goal, as well as the goal of those who enroll, transferring to four-year institutions is not usually the end product. Of those who entered community college transfer programs in the mid-90s, only about 17% transferred in five years.
What these findings suggest is that perhaps another factor determines college attendance and overall success. The Carolina Abecedarian Project at the Frank Porter Graham Institute of Child Development at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has attempted to identify that factor in a longitudinal study continued over 21 years.
Carolina Abecedarian Project
The Carolina Abecedarian Project began in 1972 and aimed to discover the long-term effects of early educational intervention on at-risk children born into poor families. As infants, the children were randomly assigned to either the control group or the experimental group, and for five years, the experimental group was provided with extensive care in a daycare center. The control group was not interfered with; however, basic supplies, such as diapers, were provided. All daycare workers were professionals educated with at least a Masters degree, and care focused on emotional, social, and cognitive development, with an emphasis on language.Results were assessed in three follow-up studies at age 12, 15, and 21, and revealed remarkable results. Not only did the intervention group maintain higher test scores throughout the years in math and reading, but the rate at which they graduated high school, entered college, waited to have their first child, and made overall positive life choices was far higher than for their non-intervention peers. Furthermore, the mothers of the intervention children were more likely to obtain higher education themselves, especially the teen mothers. Researchers suggest that early enhanced development of language “appears to have been instrumental in raising cognitive test scores”.
"The importance of high quality, educational childcare from early infancy is now clear. The Abecedarian project provides scientific evidence that early childhood education significantly improves the scholastic success and educational attainments of poor children even into early adulthood"
What we can infer from these results is that five years of extensive quality care for children beginning in infancy yields results that begin to close the gap between children of the rich and children of the poor, as earlier mentioned by Summers. However, rather than providing that low-cost education in college, the care needs to be provided in early childhood to set a foundation for the value of education that will remain with the child throughout life.
Policy implications
With the knowledge that early educational intervention programs, such as extended childcare during preschool years, can significantly prepare low-income students for educational and life successes, comes a certain degree of responsibility. One policy change that seems necessary to make is that quality child care is available to every child in the United States at an affordable rate. This has been scientifically proven to push students into college, and thus increase social mobilitySocial mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
. The ultimate end result of such a reality would be that the widely stratified educational system that exists in the U.S. today would begin to equalize so that every child born, regardless of socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation...
, would have the same opportunity to succeed. Many European countries are already exercising such successful educational systems.
International comparisons
The Swedish educational systemEducation in Sweden
Education in Sweden is mandatory for all children from year 1 to year 9 - generally from the year of the child’s seventh birthday to the year of the child’s 16th...
is one such system that attempts to equalize students and make sure every child has an equal chance to succeed. Some ways that Sweden is accomplishing these goals is by making sure every child can go to daycare affordably. Of the total cost of childcare, parents pay no more than 18% for their child; the remaining 82% is paid for by various government agencies and municipalities. In 2002, a “maximum-fee” system was introduced in Sweden that states that costs for childcare may be no greater than 3% of one’s income for the first child, 2% for the second child, 1% for the third child, and free of charge for the fourth child in pre-school. 97.5% of children age 1-5 attend these public daycare centers. Also, a new law was recently introduced that states that all four and five year old children can attend day care for free. Since practically all students, no matter what their socioeconomic background, attend the same daycare centers, equalization alongside educational development begins early and in the public sphere. Furthermore, parental leave consists of 12 months paid leave (80% of wage) whereas one month is awarded solely to the father in the form of “use it or lose it.” This results in the privilege and affordability of staying home and bonding with one’s child for the first year of life. Due to this affordability, less than 200 children in the entire country of Sweden under the age of 1 are placed in child care.
Stratification in the educational system is further diminished by providing all Swedish citizens and legal residents with the option of choosing which school they want their children to be placed in, regardless of what neighborhood they reside in or what property taxes they pay. Additionally, the Swedish government not only provides its citizens with a free college education, but also with an actual monthly allowance for attending school and college.
Together, these privileges allow for all Swedish children to have access to the same resources. A similar system can be found in France, where free, full-day child care centers known as "ecoles maternelles" enroll close to 100% of French children ages 3–5 years old. In Denmark, children from birth to age six are enrolled in childcare programs that are available at one-fifth the total costs, where the rest is covered by public funding.
for better comparison of inequality in education between countries visit: http://www.education-inequality.com/
See also
- Hidden curriculumHidden curriculumHidden curriculum, in general terms, is “some of the outcomes or by-products of schools or of non-school settings, particularly those states which are learned but not openly intended.” However, a variety of definitions have been developed based on the broad range of perspectives of those who study...
- Educational PsychologyEducational psychologyEducational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...
- Socioeconomic statusSocioeconomic statusSocioeconomic status is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation...
- Class stratificationClass stratificationClass stratification is a form of social stratification in which a society tends to divide into separate classes whose members have differential access to resources and power. An economic and cultural rift usually exists between different classes...
- Social inequalitySocial inequalitySocial inequality refers to a situation in which individual groups in a society do not have equal social status. Areas of potential social inequality include voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing and other...
- Working Class EducationWorking Class EducationWorking class education is the education of working-class people.-History:Prior to the 19th century, education for most members of society was elementary and only an elite received advanced education...
- Conflict TheoryConflict theoryConflict theories are perspectives in social science that emphasize the social, political or material inequality of a social group, that critique the broad socio-political system, or that otherwise detract from structural functionalism and ideological conservativism...