Week 7 Readings
Like every other week that we learn about educational inequality, I’m enraged. The data performed by sean reardon and his team shows that racial school segregation is associated with achievement gaps. High poverty schools, which concentrate Black and Hispanic students, have a lower educational opportunities which cause the gap. Reardon stresses that average ability doesn’t vary from school system to school system, opportunity does. I think that’s a very important think to take away from this because someone can look at this data and begin blaming individual students or racial groups as a whole for lower than average test scores. Besides being absolutely racist and eugenicist in thinking, it’s completely false.
I’ve spoken many times about being from Bridgeport which is part of Fairfield County, CT. Bridgeport could not be more different than the other cities in Fairfield County and the data from the Educational Opportunity Project proves that. When you look at Fairfield County as a whole, the socioeconomic economic status is above the national average. This is because of cities like Greenwich and Westport which are full of mansions and celebrities, but trust me those not living in mansions are on average very well off. Fairfield County as a whole, has “higher than average educational opportunities.” Yet when you look at Bridgeport the map quickly turns from green to blue. Bridgeport’s SES is “far below national average.”Students in the Bridgeport School District score 1.97 grade levels below the national average. Yet 15 minutes away, in the Fairfield School District, students score 1.99 above the national average. The difference? Property values, median income, but most importantly racial composition. Bridgeport is the perfect example of Black and Hispanic students being concentrated in high poverty schools create an achievement gap. Side note: It’s pretty cool to know that my own test scores were probably used in compiling this data.
From the Mobility Report Cards data, I learned that colleges tend to level the playing field across enrolled students with different socioeconomic backgrounds. That being said, however, students from the lowest income families remain underrepresented at Ivy-Plus colleges. Although many of these students receive generous financial aid packages, it is still not enough. This reminds me of the reading we read during week 5 by Anthony Jackson. In his piece, he detailed how financial aid isn’t enough to always enough to succeed. It’s not surprising that students from the lowest income families aren’t at these hot shot universities. Yes, their tuition might be paid for, but what about housing? Books? Food? Travel from and to home on breaks? I was also surprised to learn that colleges with highest upward mobility rates are typically mid tier public schools that have many low-income students and very good outcomes. One of the schools with the highest upward mobility rates is Stony Brook University which was my other option besides Temple University so it’s interesting to compare the data from those two schools.
