Equal Access to Education

Articles on Access and Equity in the Public Education

Harper, S. R., Patton, L. D., & Wooden, O. S. (2009). Access and equity for African American students in higher education: A critical race historical analysis of policy efforts. The Journal of Higher Education, 80(4), 389-414. https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1210&context=gse_pubs

Carroll, T. G., Fulton, K., Abercrombie, K., & Yoon, I. (2004). Fifty Years after” Brown v. Board of Education”: A Two-Tiered Education System. National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED494580.pdf

Ricks, I. (2004). The 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education: Continued Impacts on Minority Life Science Education. Cell Biology Education, 3(3), 146–149. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC520836/

Ways in which Students are Left out in the Public Education

The funding of public education is one of the major ways by which some students are left out in the public education in the United States. It is worth noting that the public education in the United States has been traditionally and legally supported through most local political units. Most states acquire the school funding from the local districts property taxes. This might have been an appropriate approach in the past, but at the current era, it has resulted into growing revenue disparity due to increased income inequality, economic and racial self-segregation between different states. The Government Accountability Office reported that between 2000 and 2013 about 9% to 16% of the students in high-poverty schools were either black or Hispanic. Some causes of this disparity ahs been said associated with uneven. In a Illinois and North Dakota, it was noted the students in high poverty districts only received 80% per student funding of what pupils in affluent districts get (Suto, 2016).

Program Developed to Promote Equal Access to Education

Every Student Succeeds Act is one of the programs that have been developed to address the issue of inequality in public institutions. This is act of parliament was put forward to control the K-12 policy education policy. It replaced the No Child Left Behind Act and modified the provisions on standardized tests to students. It stipulated the role of federal government in the elementary and secondary school. The significant control of schools is still left under the states and districts. Another of its major focus deals with preparing students for a successful college experience and a fulfilling career without discrimination based on race, income, disability, ethnicity, or proficiency in English (Brown et al., 2016). However, by the virtue of how Every Student Succeed Act is structured, not much will be achieved in dealing with achievement gaps. This tradition has lead to the punishing of vulnerable children and the low performance schools of where they attend is likely to remain. This is because the responsibility to carry out the testing of the student remains with the states who ends up disproportionally penalizing the vulnerable students and their schools. Such was the case when Chicago shut down 49 elementary school that were comprised of 90% of the African-American students and have 60% concentration of special needs students (Kunichoff, 2014).

References

Brown, C., Boser, U., Sargrad, S., & Marchitello, M. (2016). Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act: Toward a Coherent, Aligned Assessment System. Center for American Progress.

Kunichoff, Y. (2014). One Year After Closings, How are Chicago’s Public Schools Now? . Retrieved from http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16804/CTU_report_CPS_chicago_closing

Suto, R. (2016). Landscape of Inequality: How America Funds Public Schools. Retrieved from https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/landscape-of-inequality-how-america-funds-public-schools-32304/