Post 4) Emphasis on African-Americans

Like I have stated before the educational inequality is a concern for a large number of students, but most of all it is an issue among African-American students. The mostly theoretical and statistic based information is put into real life by Susan Modaress in the video, “US Unequal Educational Funding in 2013.” Modaress provides an inside look into schools and individuals that suffer that suffer from the educational inequality.

Creating equal opportunity should, at first, mean equal resources for everyone. This most definitely is not the case. Resources mean such things as good quality facilities, up to date technology and qualified teachers. Modaress discovers several examples in which the schools with mostly low-income, African-American students work with inferior resources whereas at the same time the mostly white schools have everything state of the art. If unqualified teachers teach with equipment that is out of date the results are far from equal. This part of the problem could be fixed by balancing school funding between the wealthy and the low-income neighborhoods. Modaress states that the wealthier students already have a head start because most of them participate in preschool programs and get many other advantages compared to low-income students. So basically there is no point on granting more and more funds to those who would do very well without it as well.

Many African-American students face issues like suspension from school or even pressure to drop out from school. Many African-American students come from low-income families that can’t afford to send their kids into preschools or other programs that would prepare them for schools. What this means is that those kids are not as prepared for school and they are disadvantaged from the beginning. Because the poorly resourced low-income neighborhood schools cant afford to give extra support for their students they will just keep on falling behind. According to Modaress this is a reason why the principals intentionally or unintentionally push away students that would do poorly in the standardized tests. Success in these tests defines part of the school funding.

At the end of the video comes the sad truth about the resent state of the American education. Short-term success is considered more important than what the great purpose of the education used to be.

The fact that this inequality exists is one thing, but it is a great deal more alarming that the inequality attacks basically only one race. 

Work Cited:

Modaress, Susan. US Unequal Educational Funding in 2013. Press TV Global News. YouTube, 2 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.