Discuss the issues of funding and racial segregation facing the U.S. education system

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

One of the biggest problems in public education today results from unequal funding.

Most educational funds come from state legislative appropriations and local property

taxes. Per-capita spending on public and secondary education varies widely from state

to state. In part, this is because the local property tax base has been eroding in central

cities. Many middle- and upper-income families have moved to suburban areas with

their own property tax base so their children can attend relatively new schools

equipped with the latest textbooks and state-of-the-art computers, advantages that

schools in central cities and poverty-ridden rural areas lack. In many areas of the

United States, schools remain racially segregated or have become resegregated after

earlier attempts at integration failed. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Brown

v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) that "separate but equal" segregated

schools are unconstitutional because they are inherently unequal. Efforts to bring about

desegregation—the abolition of legally sanctioned racial/ethnic segregation—or

integration—the implementation of specific actions to change the racial/ethnic and/or

class composition of the student body—have failed in many school districts throughout

the country. Some school districts have bused students across town to achieve racial

integration. Others have changed school attendance boundaries or introduced magnet

schools with specialized programs such as science or the fine arts to change

racial/ethnic composition of schools. According to recent studies, predominantly

minority schools have lower student-retention rates, have higher teacher–student ratios,

and employ less qualified teachers who typically have lower expectations for their

students. According to researchers, schools tend to reinforce rather than eliminate the

disadvantages of race and class during the years of a child's educational experience