Change Your World Week Winter 2022 (Archived)

Racial inequality in schools includes unequal funding, resources, technology, and textbooks. Schools that face inequality are filled with kids from groups of people that were historically oppressed. Sadly, this means that education is not equivalent across the United States, but is based on race, income, and the community in which the child lives in. This can lead to lower income and poor living conditions, making for a vicious cycle.

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After the civil war, Jim Crow laws instituted segregation of African Americans. This also impacted African American children in school. Not only were African Americans segregated in schools, but so were Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans. With the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson segregation was legitimized and instituted the separate but equal policy. In 1954, the case Brown v. Board of Education proved the segregated students were not equal. As a result, segregation in schools was outlawed.  

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One of the first instances of racial disparities in our school systems the US Government Accountability Office found was the disproportional discipline against black students, mainly boys. Roughly 15% of all school students are black, however black students make up 39% of school suspensions. The GAO believes this is a correlation to discrimination towards black students. The GAO also found that in areas with a population of mostly black or Hispanic people, college prep and advanced placement courses were scarcely offered. This can be directly corelated to the lack of funding school districts in high poverty areas get. The GAO recommends that the Department of Education analyzes their Civil Rights data collection in different school groups in order to combat disparities based on race in our public school systems. 

There are several things that would help resolve inequality in education. Some of these include changing the way that schools are funded. Schools get the majority of their funding from property taxes. In rundown neighborhoods, property taxes will not bring in very much money. There should also be more resources for underfunded schools to hire counselors and special education specialists. To also battle this concern, the school to prison pipeline needs to be addressed. There should be programs in place to help rehabilitation efforts for juvenile delinquency. 

More on what it will take to resolve inequality in schools

You have a voice, after reading about racial inequality in schools, how likely are you to speak out against it?