Determining if schools can provide equality of opportunity or if equality of opportunity depend on economic circumstances outside the power of the school

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Determining if schools can provide equality of opportunity or if equality of opportunity depend on economic circumstances outside the power of the school

The Federal Government desires to provide equal educational opportunities to all children in public schools. However, the intended outcomes of this equality is strongly affected by the learning experiences that children undergo which are created by the parents’ economic standards. In the United States, social classes vary widely than in any other developed country and thus, educational equality is less felt. In this regard, the achievement of schools is strongly associated with the parents’ social status (Spring, 2013).

Equal educational opportunities are appreciated as those efforts in which the government considers, as initiatives to ensure that economic status of families do not hinder children from achieving their full potentials in life. This is interpreted to mean that at minimum, all children regardless of their family’s social status should have equal educational outcomes. These outcomes are those, which are linked with other factors that are not within the controls of the schools. For example, at the home environment, children’s performance is affected by how equipped the home is to improve children’s learning. Some economically challenged homes find it hard to ensure what children need to improve learning at home is available. These needs include textbooks, computers, and others. Well up families would not have such problems and therefore, their children stand to perform better than those children who come from less privileged families. This is to say that at the school level, children can at minimum have equal educational opportunities but the outcome of this equality is affected by other economic circumstances which schools cannot control (Spring, 2013).

References

Spring, J. (2013). American Education 16^th ed. London: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Ashley Drewitz