Close your eyes and imagine you are running a race. At the finish line, rests your personal portrait of success. When you take your first step, the bridge ahead collapses. As your competitor approaches the finish line, you continue to stare at the cliff — wondering how anyone expected you to finish a race with a faulty course. As an African-American child, I often faced my own cliffs in the race of knowledge. My mother often had to forge school registration forms in order to keep me in high-income schools. She risked facing hefty fines and felony charges to ensure I would receive an adequate education. If it were not for her sacrifice, who knows where I would be. Today, I am going to go over low-income vs high-income student statistics, the “school-to-prison pipeline”, and their relation to the deficiencies in minority education. Furthermore, I will present a policy that I believe will rectify these issues.
In regards to education, research shows the cards are stacked against minority students. In 2013 an Economic Policy Institute study, 56.5% of black kindergarteners were attending high-poverty classrooms. This is an alarming rate compared to the 4.8% of white kindergarteners. Why does it matter if so many African-American students are attending low-income schools? According to the U.S. Department of Education, almost half of low-income schools are underfunded. Underfunding results in larger class sizes, faculty layoffs, fewer resources, and a lower-success rate.
The effects of underfunding have even proven to be deadly. In 2014, a black elementary school student named Laporshia Massey died as a result of underfunding. An article published by The Washington Post tells us that following budget cuts, the young girl’s school district decided to reduce the nurse position to part-time. Rather than assigning a nurse to each school, the district opted to split nurses amongst all of their schools. As a result, the nurses would only be in 1-2 times per week. Laporshia succumbed to an asthma attack on a day the nurse was not on duty. Laporshia attended Bryant Elementary, a school in the School District of Philadelphia. If you take a look at SDP’s website, you will see that of this school district’s student population, 49% are African-American. Additionally, 87% of the students live in economically disadvantaged households.
While attending underperforming schools has a negative effect on minority students, many families are forced to send their children to these institutions. In regards to education institution options, the black community is often limited. Private schools have proven to be inaccessible to most black families. The average private school tuition runs at about $17,000 per year. Given the median household income for black families in 2010 was $39,715, spending half of the family's’ yearly income on one child’s education is out of the question.
If a minority parent cannot send their child to a private school, why not send their kid to a better public school? After all, there are plenty of high-performing public schools. Unfortunately, this also proves to not be an option. By sending their children to a different school, parents risk facing criminal charges and hefty fines. In 2011, a black mother in Ohio was sentenced to 10 days in jail and 3 years of probation for sending her two young girls to a better school outside of their crime-ridden neighborhood of Akron, Ohio. Despite the harsh sentence, the mother was also fined over $30,000 in back tuition. These families are left with fewer and fewer options, causing a generational upset in minority education.
Education is not only failing the minorities with underfunding. According to PBS, studies show that compared to that of other students, black and Latino students are more likely to be suspended, expelled, or arrested in school. Black students make up 40% of U.S. school expulsions and are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended than white students. The same study reports that black and Latino students make up 70% of all school arrests. This makes the “school-to-prison pipeline” theory almost irrefutable. The school-to-prison pipeline is a term used to explain the correlation between educational institutions and juvenile/adult detention centers. Currently, blacks and latinos make up 56% of the incarcerated population. Furthermore, 68% of male prisoners do not have a high school diploma. These statistics show that the uneducated often fall into a life of crime and imprisonment. Why should we care?
Well we all know it costs more to incarcerate someone than it does to educate them. Furthermore, as Americans, we pride ourselves in living in a country of equal opportunity. Every American citizen has the right to an education. If we allow our fellow citizens to be short-changed, how can we truly take pride in our successes? How can we feel proud knowing we used our privileges to get ahead? More importantly, if we do want to work to level the playing field, what should we do?
I am proposing two courses of action. Firstly, we will overturn the Supreme Court decision of 1973 in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. This suit was put forth by Demetrio Rodriguez in 1973, whose children went to a school in a poor Latino school district in Texas.They argued that basing funding on local tax revenue was unfair to low-income districts. The Supreme Court ruled against Rodriguez 5-4 stating that education was not “a fundamental right explicitly or implicitly protected by the Constitution”. This contradicts their Brown v. Board of Education decision where Chief Justice Earl Warren said “It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” By overturning the San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, we will be letting states know they MUST uphold the promise to provide all public school children with an equal opportunity education.
Secondly, I am proposing we enact the Sliding Scale Funding Act. This will force States to create a sliding scale funding distribution process. States will determine funding by providing the majority of funds to public schools in need. As the school’s success rate rises, the funding will be redistributed to another school. This process will ensure every school has the funding necessary to play “catch up”. With these two acts, we will not need to raise taxes. We will simply reallocate, or move, the taxes being paid.
A child should not be deprived of an education simply because they live in an impoverished neighborhood or because of the ethnicity they check on a census. If we truly want to ensure the success of our country, we must fight to educate ALL children. We need to invest more in education to slow down our incarceration rates. A parent shouldn’t have to break laws to get their child access to a good education. I hope that you all now know the importance of improving minority education. An improvement for one is an improvement for all!