Urban and Suburban Secondary Education

Urban and Suburban Secondary Education

There is a big disparity between urban and suburban secondary education in public schools. Many critics of this inequality are arguing that urban schools are not receiving the same attention as schools that are in suburban areas or wealthier parts of country. Urban schools are facing a large crisis on there hands, these schools are not meeting the required criteria in educating and graduating their students. So, why is there a huge inequality between urban and suburban secondary public schools? Much of the debate falls around school funding and how much schools are given to operate. Many urban schools are not being given enough money to educate its students, pay its teachers, buy new books, and afford technology that could be used in the classroom in order to educate its students. Though funding plays an important role in education another issue that urban schools are facing is prejudice from teacher towards minority and lower income students; students who fit description are often thought of as worthless because either they are receiving low test scores, can not speak English well, create trouble in the classroom or they are simply thought of as futile. While minorities fall under prejudice, illegal immigrant students are being attacked because they are attending public schools at the expense of tax payers. Illegal immigrants are being blamed for much of reasons that schools are finding themselves in the red when it comes to school funding; simply illegal immigrants are breaking the piggy bank and leaving schools in the hole as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) puts it. In retrospect what ultimately is happening is that students in urban secondary public schools whom...

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...ducational opportunitiesprovided to U.S. citizen children, and that there was no evidence that the U.S. government seriously intended to deport the parents of the illegal alien children. The Court could reverse the ruling if these circumstances were to change or if Congress were to make the exclusion of these students explicit by legislation.

Source: U.S. Supreme Court: Plyler v. Doe (1982)

[1] “Table 160, Summary of expenditures for public elementary and secondary education, by purpose: 1919-20 to 199-2000,” Digest of Education Statistics 2002, National Center for Education and Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.

[2] National Association of State Budget Officers, State Expenditures Report, 2001.

[3] Michael Fix & Jeffrey S. Passel, “U.S. Immigration-Trends and Implication for Schools,” Immigration Studies Program, Urban Institute, January 2003.