Urban Education Inequalities

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Inequality in Urban Education Teachers and students in urban education face many inequalities on a daily basis. Funding disparities have a substantial impact on the education of students in urban schools. There is a lack of supplies, qualified teacher and the district it self suffers due to low high stakes test scores. Darling-Hammond state (2007), “Most states have not equalized funding and access to key education resources needed for learning” (p. 92). In this paper I will discuss how funding disparities have a significant impact on students, teachers and urban schools districts. Urban schools spend significantly less funding than schools in suburban areas. Ladson-Billings (2006) speaks of this funding disparities in Chicago Public Schools …show more content…
Darling-Hammond (2007) lays out how students in urban school districts lack qualified teachers. Inexperienced teachers lack confidence and expertise because often times they are teaching outside of their qualifications and in classrooms with a large number of students. Many urban school districts cannot afford to hire highly qualified teachers. Urban school districts need to invest in highly qualified teachers. They can do this by preparing the teachers, providing the teachers with training and mentors and by recruiting those highly qualified teachers. In order to do this effectively there needs to be more funding. A highly qualified teacher may not be intrigued to go work for an urban school district, when they are able to get a job in a suburban school district. Teachers in urban school districts often struggle to find the curriculum that they are using in class engaging to the students because it is not culturally appropriate and the students struggle to identify and relate to the …show more content…
Many urban schools are underperforming on these assessments and are in probationary status. Not only is the school labeled as a failing schools, but there is no extra funding for these failing schools. Diamond and Spillane (2004) speak about how much focus a school on probation puts to get off of probation or the failing school list. It seems that once a school is listed on probationary status the school's main focus is new initiatives, school improvement plans, professional development and putting incentives in place with the goal to be removed from the list. It is the goal of that school to get off of the probationary list. Often times schools on probation have a large population of minority students as well as families with low-incomes. Kozol (2006) also lays out the idea of new initiatives in failing schools that do not have an ever lasting impact. There is not link that adding additional resources and research based initiatives improves test scores. Once off probation though there is a fear that the school will once again be put on due to test scores and the continued lack of resources and highly qualified