The Inequitability of the American Education System

By Brandon Mazur / Winter 2020

I was born in North Carolina and moved to San Diego when I was around 4 years old. From 2nd to 12th grade, I attended school in a somewhat rich area. As a result of my fortunate upbringing (and some hard work along the way), I’ve managed to get myself on a path that I, and many others, would consider rather successful.

I didn’t realize it until later, though, that my parents worked tirelessly to move out of North Carolina in order to get me and my younger sister out a neighborhood zoned for bad schools, and into a neighborhood zoned for good schools. Through extraordinary effort and some good luck, my parents bested the odds and managed to get us into the schools they dreamed we would get into.

On the surface, this may sound like a typical American Dream story. However, looking deeper into this story reveals the dark side of our education system. Let’s take a look: my parents had desperately worked to get me and my sister out of an area that only offered bad schools in order to get us into an area with good schools. There’s a distinct systemic issue here: the existence of good and bad schools suggests a substantial variability in the quality of schools in this country. This raises the question: how can an equitable education system exist in a country where good and bad schools exist? I believe the answer is clear: it cannot. If my parents had not worked hard enough or had not been lucky enough – something I had no control over as a child – I would have been placed into an educational environment that may have led me down a significantly less successful path.

Through this view, we can begin to analyze the flaws of our education system, and the underlying scheme of inequitable access it creates. There are several layers to this inequitable access, ranging from the underfunding of certain schools (which contributes to the existence of good and bad schools) to the biased placement of students in special academic programs. It is also important to understand the historical contexts that that have led to the development of these flaws. In understanding both the issues in our education system and the historical contexts in which they arise in, we can begin to suggest solutions that will move our education system in a more equitable direction.

Our inequitable system has been molded by many historical contexts, including segregation and its after-effects, that continue to uphold inequality in our nation. For example, racial zoning policies of the Jim Crow era has continued to impact on the quality of many schools even today. Richard Rothstein’s book, “The Color of Law,” explains how African Americans were forced into poor and dangerous neighborhoods throughout the Jim Crow time. Rothstein reveals that even cities that did not have an explicit policy of segregation figured out “how to keep lower-income African Americans from living near middle-class whites and how to keep middle-class African Americans from buying into white middle-class neighborhoods” (Rothstein 48). In other words, African Americans looking for homes in supposedly unsegregated cities were still systematically forced into homes in subpar zones.

Since the African American families (and families of minority groups that faced similar unfair zoning) were living in a society rigged against them, they were less likely to be as wealthy as an average White family. Thus, the communities of marginalized groups created by discriminatory zoning practices had, on average, significantly less income. As a wealth gap between White and non-White areas emerged, members of non-White communities continued to find themselves at a societal disadvantage.

This disadvantage has created several issues over the years, among the greatest of which being the underfunding of schools in non-White communities. In America, public schools are funded, in part, by the property taxes of residents zoned for that school. While the details of public- school funding vary from state to state, local property-tax funding is critical for all American public schools under the current system. This means that schools in lower income areas are forced to work with less funds than schools in richer areas. Here in California we might not believe the issue is too bad. However, we will see there exist schools that may have twice as much funding per pupil compared to a school in less fortunate zones. Considering our country’s defining document states “all men are created equal,” how can the current system of school funding uphold this statement? How can a school in a low-income area that has half of the funding per pupil compared to schools in richer areas provide equal educational opportunity and experiences to children?

Evidence suggests an unfortunate answer: they simply are not equal. Here, we consider NPR’s photo essay, “Where the Kids Across Town Grow Up with Very Different Schools,” that reveals the grim the reality of school inequality. Take California’s neighboring school districts: Carmel Unified and Gonzales Unified. Despite being neighboring districts, the difference between their public schools’ funding is staggering – according to NPR, Carmel Unified raises “over $21,000 per student from local revenue including property taxes,” while Gonzales can only manage $4,399 per student from local funding. When factoring in other forms of funding, a student enrolled in Carmel is allotted $24,183 of funding, while a student enrolled in Gonzales is allotted $12,341. Even more concerning is the racial makeup of the residents zoned for these school districts: according to NPR, 38% of residents zoned for Carmel are non-White, whereas 98% of residents zoned for Gonzales are non-White. These figures clearly convey the message that non-White children tend to be zoned for underfunded schools. This is only one of many examples of inequality between different schools / school districts – the source of the problem of the existence of good and bad schools.

And yet, this inequal funding of schools is just one part of the problem – not only does our education system perpetuate inequality between separate schools, it also introduces inequality within individual schools. Specifically, children of color are far greater risk of being placed into lower-level classes and academic programs compared to their White classmates.

However, before we explore the inequality within our present schools, we must first explore the academic inequalities of the past. Radiolab’s podcast, “G: The Miseducation of Larry P,” reveals a key historical factor that has led to our current discriminatory education system. The podcast explains that, after World War II, America became obsessed rigid organization and categorization of people. Thus, people were categorized in several ways. One of these ways being intelligence, which gave rise to the frequent use of IQ tests as tools for screening intelligence. As IQ tests became a deeply engrained part of American culture, we began to implement them in an educational setting as an easy way to recommend kids for gifted or special-needs programs. The IQ test given to kids was called the WISC. We note that children of color frequently scored poorly on the WISC compared to their White counterparts. This led to the unfair and disproportionate placement of African American kids in special needs programs, which was justified by the belief that people of color were inherently less intelligent than White people.

Today, we know this this belief is not true. Harold Dent, a guest speaker on Radiolab’s podcast and a psychologist that was involved in the 1960s pushback against these racist ideologies, worked hard to reveal the racially biased nature of the IQ tests these minority children were taking. He explained that, “the tests did not consider the experiences and the backgrounds of minorities or Black children, or children who did not have a white middle-class background” (Walters). This reveals the unfair nature of IQ tests being used to screen for intelligence: rather than intelligence, these tests measured a students’ level of assimilation into White middle-class American culture.

Brandon Gambel, another guest speaker on the podcast and an African American school psychologist, gives a concrete example of this. One question on the WISC, Gambel explains, asks a child what they would do if they found someone’s wallet sitting on a shelf in a store. The correct answer was to find the store’s manager and give it to them. However, Gambel says he would have answered differently: “I would have said, you know, I’m not touching it because they’d probably accuse me of something” (Walters). While this is a reasonable answer given Gambel’s experiences, a WISC test administer would mark the answer as incorrect – a clear case of racial bias in testing.

And yet, the legacy of this test bias lives on in our education system today. While most states are have moved away from the IQ testing of the mid-1900s, racially biased categorization of students continues today. One common example is the “tracking” system. Under this system, students’ academic level is “tracked” throughout their education – students that do well are tracked into higher level classes, while students that do poorly are tracked into lower level classes. The idea of this system is to allow students to learn and grow at their own pace.

This may sound like a reasonable idea, but Nancy Solomon’s podcast, “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students,” reveals that the tracking system opens the door for racial bias and inequality. During the podcast, Solomon tours Columbia High School in Maplewood New Jersey. As she tours the school, she quickly notices that the lowest academic- leveled classrooms (level 2 and 3) are predominantly African American students, while the higher- level classes (level 4 and honors) are predominantly white (Solomon). Here, Solomon exposes the racial discrepancy between higher-level and lower-level classes is.

Additionally, we note that this discrepancy is not necessarily a result of the “laziness” or “underperforming” of African American students. This can be shown in Solomon’s conversation with an African American, Danielle, who has had a high academic performance. Despite her high performance, Danielle had trouble getting into level 4 classes. Solomon notes: “There's no automatic way students get moved up. [Danielle] was an honor roll student, but no matter what kind of grades she got, she wouldn't be moved up on her own. Someone needs to intervene” (Solomon). In other words, it is solely up to a student’s teachers whether they move up or down. This system is only as equitable as the teachers allow it to be – if a teacher is racially biased (whether they know it or not) against a black student, they will have a harder time moving up levels compared to an equally-performing white student.

Put in this context, these issues of academic inequity are clearly a huge problem with our education system. This suggests the question: how can these issues exist? Our country’s defining document states that all men are created equal, and yet our education system is set up in a way such that all people are not treated equally.

This is where the neoliberal movement comes in to play. Put simply, the neoliberal ideology embraces the idea of capitalism and competition. Over the last 50-or-so years neoliberalism has been pushed to become a dominant ideology in American culture – it’s all around us. Now, it may be difficult to pinpoint neoliberalism in our present moment (as is true with all circulating ideologies in the present moment) but taking a deeper look into certain aspects of American society reveals the neoliberal movement and its effects.

For example, we live in a system in which healthcare has become a commodity rather than a basic human right. While every other developed country offers guaranteed access to a centralized healthcare system, America remains the only developed country that relies entirely on capitalism to drive healthcare. Under the American system, people that do not have access to good health insurance or the funds required to receive care have two options: the first is to go into medical debt, and the second is to simply not seek care. The result: thousands of American deaths related to lack of healthcare coverage. According to a study done in 2008, over 26,000 Americans have died as a result of lack of access to health insurance (Tanne). Frighteningly, these numbers are projected to have risen since this study was conducted. The neoliberal justification for this is a competition-oriented argument: “people without access to insurance were not successful enough to deserve it. They didn’t work hard enough for it. Since everyone’s playing by the same rules, it must be fair system, right?” Well, it’s not so simple. The assumption that everyone’s playing by the same rules assumes that everyone has equal access to properly compete.

In an educational setting, we know this not true – we have shown that not all pupils have equal access to a high-quality education and academic resources. The neoliberal ideology hides this by claiming that a student’s academic underperformance is solely a result of their lack of effort or intelligence. It claims that an African American student is likely to end up failing because of their shortcomings, rather than the fact that their family is stuck in a neighborhood zoned for an underfunded school. It claims that Mexican American students perform worse because their families simply don’t care about education, not because of cultural and linguistic barriers (which is ironic considering studies have shown Mexican Americans tend to care about education the most). This is a pressing issue in our society, and in order to solve it we first need to push aside the assumption of equal access that the neoliberal model assumes. Once we see the truth of the inequitability of our education system, we can begin to make systemic changes to remedy its issues. Here, I will list proposed changes:

1. The inequal system used to fund public schools must be changed. As mentioned, when there are school districts that have twice as much financial resources per pupil as other districts, there is no way we can have an equitable education system. Thus, it only makes sense that the funding system be modified in such a way that guarantees that all schools receive similar amount of funding per pupil. For example, all local-school funded property taxes could be pooled together by the state and distributed equitably relative to how many students attend each school. This is not necessarily the only way to fix this; anything that moves the public-school funding system in a more equitable direction will go a long way in reducing the commonality of “good” and “bad” schools.

2. Teachers must be trained in such a way that makes them conscious of the differences in culture that their students may come from. We’ve seen past examples of this in the WISC IQ exam for children, but cultural differences are still often not considered today. For example, a common teaching tool is Ruby Payne’s Framework for Understanding Poverty. While this tool has uses in training teachers, it over-generalizes the lives of impoverished students that can lead to a stereotypical understanding of where impoverished students are coming from. The reality is that, all kids come from different households and cultures, so not all kids will respond well to the same teaching strategies. Teachers should be trained to be aware of this – rather than assuming an underperforming student is lazy or unintelligent, perhaps it is best to make an effort to learn where that child comes from. In a society that aims to be a melting-pot of cultures, our education system should aim to take this multitude of cultures into account.

3. Standardized tests determine your admittance into colleges must be done away with. The SAT is the biggest culprit here, but there are a many other tests that have a similar function. The fact of the matter is, these standardized tests do not measure how “college-ready” a student is. Rather, they measure how much to test-preparing resources (such as SAT boot-camps, etc.) a student has access to. Since these resources are generally expensive (the “best” classes cost upwards of $3,000!), this essentially disqualifies low-income students from performing exceptionally on these standardized tests.

Note that, this is an additional example of how neoliberalism is engrained in our education system – standardized tests support the model of competition, whose inequity is hidden behind the false assumption that everyone has access to the same resources. The Lumumba-Zapata College demands from March 14th, 1969 explain the issue well: “[college] admissions requirements must not be used as an instrument for excluding minority students...” (Lumumba-Zapata). Since minority students are more likely to fall into lower financial groups, this directly applies to standardized testing such as the SAT.

There are a couple approaches we can take to fixing this issue. The first, and most straightforward, approach is to simply eliminate the SAT (and other standardized testing) from college admissions. The second approach could be to make all SAT (and other standardized test) preparation classes available in high school curriculum. This would be a step to ensure that all students will have equal access to test preparation, as opposed to only those who can afford it.

Note, immediately enacting these changes at once is simply unattainable, nor is this an exhaustive list of possible changes toward a more equitable system. The purpose of these propositions is to pave a framework for the direction our education system should go in. These are changes that should not (and realistically cannot) happen immediately, but instead should be future goals. We should be hasty enough to ensure these changes become reality within a feasible time, while being careful enough to ensure they are implemented in a sustainable and correct manner.

Overall, fixing these issues is critical to the equitability of our education system. This should be a top priority for our country – an inequitable education system is a self-perpetuating entity. When a minority or impoverished student is forced into a bad school and lacks access to resources that could grant them a quality education, that student is most likely going to be stuck growing up in the neighborhood they grow up in. When they have kids, the cycle repeats. Under this system, many people are set up to fail from the very start. If we want to be true to our defining document – that is, truly live by the idea that all men are created equal – we must change our education system in such a way that ensures that all students have equal access to a quality education. This can only happen through widespread awareness and action.

Words Cited

Gannaway, Preston, et al. “PHOTOS: Where The Kids Across Town Grow Up With Very Different Schools.” NPR, NPR, 25 July 2019.

“Lumumba-Zapata College B.S.C.-M.A.Y.A. Demands for the Third College, U.C.S.D.” Received by UCSD, University of San Diego: California, 14 Mar. 1969, San Diego, California.

Pink, Daniel. “How to Predict a Student's SAT Score: Look at the Parents' Tax Return.” Daniel H. Pink, 22 Feb. 2012.

“Racial Zoning.” The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 39–57.

Solomon, Nancy. “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools Are Failing Black Students.” PRX, 2010.

Tanne, Janice Hopkins. “More than 26,000 Americans Die Each Year Because of Lack of Health Insurance.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), BMJ Publishing Group Ltd., 19 Apr. 2008.

Walters, Pat, et al. “G: The Miseducation of Larry P.” WNYC Studios, Radiolab, 7 June 2019.