Week 4 Readings
#templesoced
The New York Times story titled “Without Fixing Inequality, The Schools Are Always Going To Struggle” details eight public school teacher’s accounts of how their students’ zip code shapes their lives. One of those teachers, Julie Roneson, shares her experience of being a teacher in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I went to school in Bridgeport from grades 2–12. Ms. Roneson says that “there is a juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in my area” and it couldn’t be more true. In Bridgeport, we experienced asbestos leaks, shootings in our neighborhoods, budget cuts to sports, the arts, and our language programs. All the sports teams would share two fields and one gymnasium. We were taught by Teach for America teachers from suburbs far away that didn’t understand the experiences their students were facing. I had two Black teachers the whole time I went through the Bridgeport school district. Even though my peers at school were predominantly Black.
If we drove maybe fifteen minutes out (maybe not even that far to be honest), like for example, when our sports teams had away games, we were in a different world. The neighboring suburbs Fairfield, Westport, Trumbull had mansions, clean streets, and limited police presence. They had political science and home economic classes. The schools had multiple fields, per sport, they had matching uniforms and gear. The students noticed the differences. The median income in Bridgeport is $45,441. In Fairfield? One town over? The median income is $134,559. (my stomach hurts just reading that)
In “How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality”, Matt Desmond calls for mortgage-interest deduction, or MID, reform. The MID and other national housing policies reward affluent homebuyers and give nothing to renters who are disproportionately poor. Desmond explains that the MID incentivizes affluent homebuyers to “to pay more for propoerties than they could have otherwise.” This inflates home values and in turn increasing property taxes. This means that affluent areas have more money to put into their schools. In poorer areas, where the majority of people rent, there is a smaller pool of money to put into schools. One way to reform the MID would be to cap the size of the deductible morgtage debt and reallocating the savings to housing assistance. Something so small would save billions of dollars. I agree with MID reform because I think we need to stop giving handouts to the upper middle class. I don’t think however that this will eliminate poverty and end education inequality. The article states that MID reform wouldn’t really change home ownership rates. People wouldn’t automatically be able to afford new houses and increase property values to fund better schools. There needs to be something more direct and to the point. Reforming the MID would do little on homeownership rates because it only affects the really really affluent. There needs to be policies that directly helps those who are renters, those who are poor, etc. No one should be paying 30% of their income on rent and sending their kids to poorly funded, segregated schools.
I got my data about median income from census. gov!!
