Educational Inequality within Low Income Communities

Educational Inequality within Low Income Communities

by Axel Garcia

In the United States, one of the main reasons for the struggles and cycle of poverty that low-income communities face is due to our faulty educational system. In many states, public schools heavily rely on state funds and property taxes to make sure the school can give the best responses to the students.

The issue with this system is that the state does not have enough money to properly fund all the schools where they can be successful for all their students. In areas where low-income families live we see that schools are not funded properly and the consequences are very stagnant. These consequences range from not being able to prepare students for college, not having books and materials that are up to date, and finally lack of extracurricular activities.

The article Unequal Schools, Generation of Poverty explained how “ Teachers in high-poverty schools were more likely to report that academic instructional time was eroded by problems with school facilities, lack of access to technology and libraries, classroom lockdowns, standardized test preparation, teacher absences, and uncertified or insufficiently qualified substitute teachers”( Kathleen Kelleher).

All these issues that teachers and students have to face lead to these low-income families staying in the cycle of poverty, without schools that are equally funded it means that future generations will not be able to succeed and break this cycle of poverty. For this to change the United States needs to make sure all schools receive equal amounts of funding for low-income families to have a chance to be successful and be able to break the cycle of poverty.

Work Cited
Kelleher, Kathleen. “Unequal Schools, Generations of Poverty.” Ucla.Edu, https://blueprint.ucla.edu/feature/unequal-schools-generations-of-poverty/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.

Axel Garcia
Third Year Sociology Major
Sonoma State University