Week 4 Readings

This weeks readings reminded me of a class I took freshman year called Socioeconomic Foundations of Education where we discussed the opportunity gap in education and the causes of this gap. In “How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality,” redlining is mentioned a couple times. The consequences of redlining are very prevalent in the education system because the neighborhoods that were labelled as minority communities receive less funding for schools and the children suffer the consequences. Students in low-income communities receive less support than children from higher income neighborhoods. The perspectives from the teachers in “Without Fixing Inequality, The Schools Are Always Going To Struggle,” lend itself to this as well. Teachers from low-income schools must carry the responsibility of not only educating students, but also the environmental factors that contribute to their students’ success (such as homelessness and food insecurity). Students already have enough on their plates and the added stressors of having to support themselves and their families only decreases the importance of school in their lives. Students who must fight for survival every day are going to be less concerned with their education.

To reform the inequalities in housing and between high and low income schools, a lot must be done. The government needs to be more concerned with helping low-income families than providing tax breaks for high-income homeowners. In “‘We Shall Not Be Moved’: A Hunger Strike, Education, and Housing in Chicago,” many schools had to close because the funding was not there and people having relocate. In addition, the view of success in low-income neighborhoods is having the ability to move out of these neighborhoods. As stated in the article, if everyone leaves the neighborhood, the neighborhood does not get fixed. In order to close the opportunity gap, there needs to be serious education reform on the government level and more resources need to be given to those who need it, not those who can afford it.

#TempleSocEd