Who Suffers in an Imperfect Education System?
By Sierra Rose / Fall 2019
After 6 years in the Marine Corps, my grandfather had learned valuable technical skills that landed him a job as an electrician. His training from his military experience was all he needed to be hired. Today, the same position would require a college degree to even be considered for the job. The increasing requirements and expectations for the workforce is reflected in the education systems leading up to these jobs. College acceptances become more and more competitive each year, which in turn increases the drive to stand above the masses. As it becomes more competitive, the differences in opportunities in society become more obvious. The unfair advantages prevalent in the college application process drive poorer communities out of the competition. Without the commitment of both rich and poor communities to ensure equal education, our society will continue to face greater inequality and fail to recognize the potential in many young students.
There are numerous flaws within the United States’ education system preventing it from showing up on the National Center of Education and the Economy (NCEE) list of top performing education systems. College application process reveals many of these flaws and highlights the inequalities rampant in the system. The problem with the application process is that the application looks at your high school academics and accomplishments, and selectively accepts those who they deem are top contenders. But not all communities have the same opportunities to excel within their schools as much as the ‘best’ high schools in the country, even if the students are intelligently capable. Before we discuss how these inequalities affect the students, we need to look at an example institution with more opportunities than one may have in a poorer community. Great Oak High School has implemented an opportunity for students to participate in a rigorous learning program called the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. This program is a “nonprofit education program founded to give all students the opportunity to receive an education fit for a globalizing world” (accreditedschoolsonline.org). The concept of standardizing education across the world is a great aspiration, however, the United States has over 26,000 secondary schools (Riser-Kositsky), with only 6,812 schools with the IB program in the world as of 2019 (ibo.org). Since the IB program is a rigorous program that requires extra courses and activities, receiving the diploma for completing the IB program is more desirable for a college application than the traditional high school diploma. So, if you have the opportunity to enter the program , it's a great way to prove what you are capable of, but how do you prove you are capable of this kind of program if you don’t even have the opportunity to participate in it? This is when programs like IB give students in these communities an advantage over students attending schools that do not offer any additional education programs such as IB. Colleges may look at whether or not your school even offered this program, but regardless of what circumstances they are able to understand, students without the IB opportunity can’t prove to colleges that they are capable of college level coursework with the same conviction as those who completed their IB diploma. The IB program is just one example of the educational advantages developed communities get over poorer ones. From this example, we can gather that the resources offered to wealthier communities provide multiple ways for students to put themselves ahead in the college admissions process. As mentioned, the schools tend to offer more advanced courses, or prepare students with extracurricular opportunities in their area of interest. Wealthier parents are able to provide more support and help for students, with tutors and preparation classes. Then there are those who completely ignore any ethical guidelines and either pay people to take their tests or pay their way into the university itself. The public recently learned of an appalling example of this taking place when William Singer, a long time member of the college preparation community, “admitted to running a $25 million scheme in which parents allegedly gave money to his bogus charity, with the agreement Mr. Singer would then pay coaches or their athletic programs to designate his clients’ children as athletic recruits, regardless of athletic ability” (Levitz and Korn). With the right amount of money, somebody was willing to fabricate entire athletic profiles to assist with college admission. Money was also considered directly by the University. The Wall Street Journal released an article exposing that “Emails among athletics, admissions and fundraising officials at the University of Southern California show the school explicitly weighed how much money applicants’ families could donate when determining whether to admit students” (Levitz and Korn). They took note of the financial situation of each applicant, looking for the wealthier students who could provide more for the school.
Poor communities are most negatively impacted by this problem. They don’t have the funding to provide their schools with the same programs and support that other schools may have access to. Local property taxes are the funding behind public schools, so the lesser the value of the properties in the community, the less funding the school gets. This system is rooted deep in the formation of education in the United States, and did not cause much inequality at first. But when immigrants and minorities were forced into communities with low property values, the inequality quickly grew. In 2005, the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) filed a lawsuit that was supposed to “decide whether inequality in school funding violates the state’s constitution” (Semuels). According to Semuels in their article Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School, “They want the state to look at how much a district can reasonably raise from its property taxes, and then come up with a formula for how different districts can share revenues so that schooling is more equitable.” The final decision on the case was made in 2018. The court favored Connecticut’s “imperfect education system,” not disagreeing with the fact that the system is imperfect, but determining that it was not the courts job “to create educational policy” (CCJED v Rell). The justification for this decision reveals what seems to be standing in the way of any progress: responsibility.
Another obstacle that seems to stop people from addressing this problem is the Constitution. The Constitution did not account for the growth of the education system in the United States, and as the system grew, opportunities for revision were lost because the neoliberal society favored corporate interest above the general public. To help us illustrate this point, we can turn to the work of Joel Spring and his book Education and the Rise of the Corporate State. In the book, Spring says, “the development of a factory-like system in the nineteenth-century schoolroom was not accidental” (Spring). The large corporations during this time used their wealth to develop education, while influencing the way people learned. “These educational institutions did not encourage dissent; they trained the middlemen in the American system… to keep the system going [and] to be loyal buffers against trouble” (Zinn). At that time, schools were structured with the intent of providing leading corporations with a solid future foundation.
Today, these institutions are still rooted in our country’s foundation. They need to be nationally updated. The lack of national cohesion in addressing this issue causes delays in potential reform. In a 1973 court case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, ruled that “there is no right to equal funding in education under the Constitution” (Semuels). This is something that should be looked at as it affects everyone’s access to equal opportunity. Even though the courts can clearly see the inequality, they don’t feel it is their duty to properly address it. Besides the constitutions failure to adjust to the shifting educational situation, there exists simple ignorance. “Opponents of school-finance reform often argue...that increased spending won’t lead to better outcomes at schools in poor districts. But studies show that after courts order public schools to spend more on low-income students, students begin to do better and better in school” (Semuels). The United States’ foundational history is what is governing our education policies of today. We need to consider the different circumstances of the modern educational system.
The imperfect education system is heavily influenced by today’s neoliberal structure, which guides many students into the university system after high school, with the mindset that this is the path that is essential for success. Modern neoliberal society is driven by competition, which pushes people to maximize their capabilities, and reach their limits. Many of them believe that through their hard work and substantial efforts throughout high school, they will be able to attend the university they’ve been striving for; unfortunately, for many this is not the case. Maintaining a neoliberal structure in education will not allow these contradictions to be resolved since neoliberal ideals are focused on corporate interest and market fundamentalism. It is difficult to overcome these ideals because the current system still produces successful college-educated students and the overall society, from a neoliberal perspective, continues to make progress. Neoliberalism trusts the free market, which in turn causes them to ignore the biases hidden within the system. In order to overcome these biases, some principles must be considered.
By implementing specific democratic principles, we could overcome the corporate control of education. To help illustrate these principles, we can turn to the Port Huron statement, written by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Port Huron in 1962. One of the principles that the students suggested for the economic sphere steering the direction of education is:
that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; self-directed, not manipulated, encouraging independence, a respect for others, a sense of dignity, and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics;
This principle suggest that we should shift the purpose of our education towards a different sort of work that doesn’t tunnel everybody into a specific form of success. They also suggest a new principle for all social institutions where they “should be generally organized with the well-being and dignity of man as the essential measure of success” (SDS). This parallels the idea of the previous principle that the perspective of success would be altered into much more than money or survival.
With the implementation of these principles, the attitudes within our society would shift. Success being measured through the well-being of man, rather than just through monetary value, makes us more valuable than what people see on paper. For the SDS, this means that “We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human being to the status of things.” For the college application, this would be means for some major reconstruction of the acceptance process. They would need to take a deeper look than just GPA’s and achievements marked on paper. Another consideration that would arise with the principles is that “we would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity” (SDS). This shift of power would adjust the competitive nature of our education, and create a more open education with a wider range of opportunities, giving everyone something they can happily strive in. Education would not be endured for the soul purpose of obtaining a position in a successful corporation that currently holds power, or even for creating a new powerful company; but it would be endured for fulfilling our individual capabilities adding a variety of contributions to society.
People in our society should be concerned with this problem because the strictness of the competitive drive behind college education has made it difficult for most members of our society to reach success. Success for most is seen as the status of the oligarch class. This makes it extremely difficult to feel accomplished within a lifetime as this success lies with less than a mere 1 percent of our population. In an article written by Mary Ellen Flannery, a school counselor by the name of Kathy Reamy expresses that “It’s so hard for the kids who are already maybe perfectionists, and they’re getting the first B in their lives and they’re fearful it’s going to prevent them going to college, any college, never mind their dream college.” She expressed during a discussion about possible contributions to the fact that “the suicide rate among U.S. youth, ages 10 to 17, had increased by 70 percent between 2006 and 2016” according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (Flannery). Even if their parents and family praise them for doing their absolute best, students feel they have failed themselves with the rejection of the school that was supposed to guide them to a successful future. The difficulty to avoid feeling like a failure has increased the depression within our society along with the rate of suicides.
Figure 1. Suicide Rates by Age from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Figure 1 illustrates the increasing suicide rate within the age range of 15 to 24, the age where students start to realize their position in relation to what they perceive as success. This problem doesn’t only affect students applying for college, but their friends and families as well. Older generations may fail to see the newfound difficulty faced by students today, as more than a military training is required to land a supportive position as a electrician in today’s age.
Works Cited
“Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding.” CCJEF.
Connecticut School Finance Project.
Flannery, Mary Ellen, et al. “As Teen Suicide Rate Increases, States Look to Schools to Address Crisis.” NEA Today, 6 June 2018.
Levitz, Jennifer, and Melissa Korn. “'Father Is Surgeon,' '1 Mil Pledge': The Role of Money in USC Admissions.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 3 Sept. 2019.
Riser-Kositsky, Maya. “Education Statistics: Facts About American Schools.” Education Week, 22 July 2019.
Semuels, Alana. “Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 25 Aug. 2016.
Spring, Joel H. Education and the Rise of the Corporate State. Beacon Pr., 1972.
Students for a Democratic Society. Port Huron Statement, 1962.
“Suicide Statistics.” AFSP, 16 Apr. 2019.
“Top Performing Countries.” NCEE.
Writers, Staff. “What Is International Baccalaureate? Program Benefits & Advice.” AccreditedSchoolsOnline.org, AccreditedSchoolsOnline.org, 7 Dec. 2019.
Zinn, H. Peoples History of the United States. Harper & Row, 1981.