Inequality, Poverty, Education

Inequality, Poverty, Education PDF Author: F. Ashurst
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137347015
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
This book challenges the practice of exclusion by uncovering its roots in 19th century social and educational policy targeting poor children. Revealing a hidden history of exclusion, this analysis exposes the connections between the state, the education system and social policy, and opens a space for radical alternatives.

When Grit Isn't Enough

When Grit Isn't Enough PDF Author: Linda F. Nathan
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0807041823
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Examines major myths informing American education and explores how educators can better serve students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income Each year, as the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), an urban high school that boasts a 94 percent college acceptance rate, Linda Nathan made a promise to the incoming freshmen: “All of you will graduate from high school and go on to college or a career.” After fourteen years at the helm, Nathan stepped down and took stock of her alumni: of those who went to college, a third dropped out. Feeling like she failed to fulfill her promise, Nathan reflected on ideas she and others have perpetuated about education: that college is for all, that hard work and determination are enough to get you through, that America is a land of equality. In When Grit Isn’t Enough, Nathan investigates five assumptions that inform our ideas about education today, revealing how these beliefs mask systemic inequity. Seeing a rift between these false promises and the lived experiences of her students, she argues that it is time for educators to face these uncomfortable issues head-on and explores how educators can better serve all students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income. Drawing on the voices of BAA alumni whose stories provide a window through which to view urban education today, When Grit Isn’t Enough helps imagine greater purposes for schooling.

Child Poverty and Inequality

Child Poverty and Inequality PDF Author: Duncan Lindsey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195305442
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Duncan Lindsey shows in this volume that it is possible to provide true opportunity to all children, insuring them against a lifetime of inequality. When we do, the walls dividing the United States by race, ethnicity, and wealth will begin to crumble.

The Education Trap

The Education Trap PDF Author: Cristina Viviana Groeger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674259157
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger’s test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily on public schools. She examines how workplaces came to depend on an army of white-collar staff, largely women and second-generation immigrants, trained in secondary schools. But Groeger finds that the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, and so shift workplace power toward management. And advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality. The idea that more education should be the primary means of reducing inequality may be appealing to politicians and voters, but Groeger warns that it may be a dangerous policy trap. If we want a more equitable society, we should not just prescribe more time in the classroom, but fight for justice in the workplace.

Rethinking Education and Poverty

Rethinking Education and Poverty PDF Author: William G. Tierney
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421417685
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
How can new ways of thinking about education improve the lives of poor students? In Rethinking Education and Poverty, William G. Tierney brings together scholars from around the world to examine the complex relationship between poverty and education in the twenty-first century. International in scope, this book assembles the best contemporary thinking about how education can mediate class and improve the lives of marginalized individuals. In remarkably nuanced ways, this volume examines education's role as both a possible factor in perpetuating—and a tool for alleviating—entrenched poverty. Education has long been seen as a way out of poverty. Some critics, however, argue that educational systems mask inequality and perpetuate cycles of poverty and wealth; others believe that the innate resilience or intellectual ability of impoverished students is what allows those individuals to succeed. Rethinking Education and Poverty grapples in turn with the ramifications of each possibility. Throughout these compelling, far-reaching, and provocative essays, the contributors seek to better understand how local efforts to reduce poverty through education interact—or fail to interact—with international assessment efforts. They take a broad historical view, examining social, economic, and educational polices from the postWorld War II period to the end of the Cold War and beyond. Although there is no simple solution to inequality, this book makes clear that education offers numerous exciting possibilities for progress.

Savage Inequalities

Savage Inequalities PDF Author: Jonathan Kozol
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0770435688
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.”—The New York Times Book Review In 1988, Jonathan Kozol set off to spend time with children in the American public education system. For two years, he visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. . . . Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. . . . Everyone should read this important book.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today “Kozol has written a book that must be read by anyone interested in education.”—Elizabeth Duff, Philadelphia Inquirer “The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful voice. . . . Kozol has written a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system and the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in cities.”—Emily Mitchell, Time “Easily the most passionate, and certain to be the most passionately debated, book about American education in several years . . . A classic American muckraker with an eloquent prose style, Kozol offers . . . an old-fashioned brand of moral outrage that will affect every reader whose heart has not yet turned to stone.”—Entertainment Weekly

Economic Inequality and Higher Education

Economic Inequality and Higher Education PDF Author: Stacy Dickert-Conlin
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610441567
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
The vast disparities in college attendance and graduation rates between students from different class backgrounds is a growing social concern. Economic Inequality and Higher Education investigates the connection between income inequality and unequal access to higher education, and proposes solutions that the state and federal governments and schools themselves can undertake to make college accessible to students from all backgrounds. Economic Inequality and Higher Education convenes experts from the fields of education, economics, and public policy to assess the barriers that prevent low-income students from completing college. For many students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, the challenge isn't getting into college, but getting out with a degree. Helping this group will require improving the quality of education in the community colleges and lower-tier public universities they are most likely to attend. Documenting the extensive disjuncture between the content of state-mandated high school testing and college placement exams, Michael Kirst calls for greater alignment between K-12 and college education. Amanda Pallais and Sarah Turner examine barriers to access at elite universities for low-income students—including tuition costs, lack of information, and poor high school records—as well as recent initiatives to increase socioeconomic diversity at private and public universities. Top private universities have increased the level and transparency of financial aid, while elite public universities have focused on outreach, mentoring, and counseling, and both sets of reforms show signs of success. Ron Ehrenberg notes that financial aid policies in both public and private universities have recently shifted towards merit-based aid, away from the need-based aid that is most helpful to low-income students. Ehrenberg calls on government policy makers to create incentives for colleges to increase their representation of low-income students. Higher education is often vaunted as the primary engine of upward mobility. Instead, as inequality in America rises, colleges may be reproducing income disparities from one generation to the next. Economic Inequality and Higher Education illuminates this worrisome trend and suggests reforms that educational institutions and the government must implement to make the dream of a college degree a reality for all motivated students.

Restoring Opportunity

Restoring Opportunity PDF Author: Greg J. Duncan
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1612506364
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
In this landmark volume, Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane lay out a meticulously researched case showing how—in a time of spiraling inequality—strategically targeted interventions and supports can help schools significantly improve the life chances of low-income children. The authors offer a brilliant synthesis of recent research on inequality and its effects on families, children, and schools. They describe the interplay of social and economic factors that has made it increasingly hard for schools to counteract the effects of inequality and that has created a widening wedge between low- and high-income students. Restoring Opportunity provides detailed portraits of proven initiatives that are transforming the lives of low-income children from prekindergarten through high school. All of these programs are research-tested and have demonstrated sustained effectiveness over time and at significant scale. Together, they offer a powerful vision of what good instruction in effective schools can look like. The authors conclude by outlining the elements of a new agenda for education reform. Restoring Opportunity is a crowning contribution from these two leading economists in the field of education and a passionate call to action on behalf of the young people on whom our nation’s future depends. Copublished with the Russell Sage Foundation

The Poverty and Education Reader

The Poverty and Education Reader PDF Author: Paul C. Gorski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000979563
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
Through a rich mix of essays, memoirs, and poetry, the contributors to The Poverty and Education Reader bring to the fore the schooling experiences of poor and working class students, highlighting the resiliency, creativity, and educational aspirations of low-income families. They showcase proven strategies that imaginative teachers and schools have adopted for closing the opportunity gap, demonstrating how they have succeeded by working in partnership with low-income families, and despite growing class sizes, the imposition of rote pedagogical models, and teach-to-the-test mandates. The contributors—teachers, students, parents, educational activists, and scholars—repudiate the prevalent, but too rarely discussed, deficit views of students and families in poverty. Rather than focusing on how to “fix” poor and working class youth, they challenge us to acknowledge the ways these youth and their families are disenfranchised by educational policies and practices that deny them the opportunities enjoyed by their wealthier peers. Just as importantly, they offer effective school and classroom strategies to mitigate the effects of educational inequality on students in poverty. Rejecting the simplistic notion that a single program, policy, or pedagogy can undo social or educational inequalities, this Reader inspires and equips educators to challenge the disparities to which underserved communities are subjected. It is a positive resource for students of education and for teachers, principals, social workers, community organizers, and policy makers who want to make the promise of educational equality a reality.

The Privileged Poor

The Privileged Poor PDF Author: Anthony Abraham Jack
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674239660
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
An NPR Favorite Book of the Year Winner of the Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award Winner of the CEP–Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker “The lesson is plain—simply admitting low-income students is just the start of a university’s obligations. Once they’re on campus, colleges must show them that they are full-fledged citizen.” —David Kirp, American Prospect “This book should be studied closely by anyone interested in improving diversity and inclusion in higher education and provides a moving call to action for us all.” —Raj Chetty, Harvard University The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.