Opportunity Gap In Urban Schools

Should student’s opportunities to learn be based on their zip code? In America, students attending low-income, minority-majority, urban schools often aren’t given the same opportunities as students in middle-classed, white, suburban schools. The opportunity gap is the number one problem affecting student’s success in the American education system. The opportunity gap can be defined as the disparity in access to quality schools and the resources needed for all children to be academically successful. (Hammond) Students in urban areas are disadvantaged in the following ways; the majority of the teachers are inexperienced and low-payed, students have limited access to up-to date textbooks, schools lack modern technologies and computers, and the

It all comes down to the vicious cycle between funding and achievement. In America funding is based on school achievement. The better achievement rates that a school has, the more funding it receives. This began when the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented to motivate schools to raise achievement and close the achievement gap. This act backfired leaving minority children in poverty more behind than ever before. “The majority of states have funding systems with “flat” or “regressive” funding distribution patterns that ignore the need for additional funding in high-poverty districts” (Strauss 2014) Schools that already had little money and poor student achievement began to crumble. ”the highest-poverty districts spend more than 30 percent less per student than the lowest-poverty ones. In more than half of the states, there are hundreds of high-poverty schools that receive less funding than schools that serve more-affluent students.” (Semansky 2015) Withholding funds from failing schools will only cause more failure among students by being unable to provide the resources students need to learn. If anything, lower achieving students (that are mostly in low-income areas) should receive more funding to help provide these students a better learning environment that could ultimately raise their achievement scores. Funding

The lack of resources and funding available to low-income, urban schools affects student’s achievement and does not give them a fair opportunity for success. It is heart breaking to see students that need to succeed in education the most so they able to get out of the cycle of poverty, not be able to be given the chance of a good quality education. The No Child Left behind Act has had the opposite effect of what was attended, and indeed left children in low-income/low achieving schools behind. School funding is an extremely important factor in which can make or break student achievement. School funding means more high-quality teachers, better materials, updated textbooks, and more resources in which can help a student thrive. When students are denied these things their achievement seems to plummet. Which is why the No Child Left Behind Act was unsuccessful by only funding high achieving schools, leaving low achieving schools in the dirt. The ESSA plan adopted many opportunities for low-income schools in which would help fund and make achievement plans for low-income or low-achieving schools. Unfortunately the Trump administration has put the act to a pause, and it is too soon to be able to tell if opportunity gaps will come to an