Education, the Great Equalizer: A Glimpse into Education Disparities Across U.S. Public Schools

-- By TaleahTyrell - 21 Feb 2021

My family emigrated from Paraguay to the U.S. when I was six years old. Growing up in a low-income community, they religiously emphasized the value of education. They told me that I could do anything with a good education and a willingness to learn. Every day after school, as my mom cooked or clean, she had me read to her. Though she did not speak English, she knew how important it was for me to practice speaking my English and how beneficial it would be for me to develop a strong habit of reading.

As I got older, I also began to idolize education. I sought the best grades because I saw how many opportunities it brought me. In the third grade, I got the best grades in my class and during the end of the year assembly, the school principal awarded me with a certificate and a fresh $20 bill. That evening I proudly gave that money to my parents feeling accomplished that I too could contribute to the family. In high school, I was selected to serve as a senate page again largely due to my academic achievements. As I listened to a senator argue to allocate more money into the Farm Bill for food stamps so that children could eat, I was fully convicted of my “education religion.” For her to be able to get up on that podium and advocate for people like my family she had to be educated. Committed to advancing education, after college I returned to my community working at two different education non-profits and also substitute teaching. The disparities I witnessed, not obvious to me as a child, showed me that for American education to truly be the great equalizer, there needed to be a huge overhaul and emphasis on the inequities that are found.

Inequities: Education can’t be the great equalizer when its not distributed equally.

Basic Literacy looks wildly different

Income

The week before Thanksgiving break Sophia, a 5 year-old kindergartner came up to me during indoor recess. I’d seen her at the white board for the past 5 minutes writing the letters “m” “w” “e” over and over, face scrunched. “Ms. T! I got it! “w” “e” that says “we” and… “m” “e” that says “me.” They had been studying letters and connecting them phonetically in an effort to get the students ready to begin learning how to read. Sophia had just read her first word. I knew what a world of opportunity was had just now opened to her.

Low-income

I arrived at the elementary school as an AmeriCorps? member. During the day I would be serving as a tutor and in the evening I would be leading an extended learning block with 2nd and 3rd grade students whose parents worked late. That same day, I was assigned my first day time case load: six 3rd grade students needing help fluency. I met with the teacher who told me these students were reading at a kindergarten level and I needed to teach them how to read. Naively, I asked her who would give me literacy training as I’d just graduated from college but never taught anyone how to read. She laughed. That night, after hours of searching “how to teach children how to read” on YouTube? , I called my mom. “Mom, I need to teach students how to read. How did you teach me?” “I taught you the vowels first, “a, e, i, o, u” then the consonants. Once you knew them all we practiced connecting them “ma, me, mi, mo, mu. Start there, they will get it!” The next day I did exactly that. I asked my students to tell me the vowels. Most stared at me blankly, one started writing something down, the kid next to him sneakily looked over his shoulder and wrote the same thing. “a, e, r, i, d” Third graders, who for three years had, if lucky, heard the vowels wrong, if not, had completely missed that lesson. Third graders, whose teacher now was a recently graduated college student who’d never done anything like this before and was playing it by ear.

Food Insecurity

For various reasons, too many parents were not bringing their kids to the early breakfast program at 7:30 am. Shame, embarrassment pride, other responsibilities, too early, not enough time, etc. whatever individual reasons were, the results remained the same: more than 90% of the students required breakfast, and less than 10% attended regularly. Evidence of hunger was rampant around the school, students could not focus, fell asleep in class, or had behavioral issues. The board made the decision to shift the breakfast program from before school to the first 30 minutes of school. So, from 8:00-8:30am, all students at the school ate breakfast in the classroom. No talking, finish at least your milk and cereal, clean up after you’re finished. Even still, students were two grade levels behind other schools in our city.

Expectation versus Reality: Well intended “solutions” but throwing money or technology at low-income districts does not actually help.

Donors expectations when gifting to schools

A well intending tech company donated thousands of kid friendly robots to our students. “We want to expose low-income children to technology as early as possible!”

A software company donated a thousand brand new laptops to our district. “High school students need to have access to computers in their homes!”

The reality of how districts receive said gifts

The next week, I had a class full of crying third graders who could not read the robot software instructions and therefore felt frustrated by the coding process.

After 15 laptops had been stolen or sold by students on their walk home, the district took over the laptops and locked them in the basement.

How do we fix this?

The first step is to acknowledge the disparities that exist and stop throwing Band-Aids on the deep seeded issues.

As we've talked about this in person, I don't want to be repetitious. Your use of your own experience is valuable throughout, but you need to be as brief as possible in each of your stories so as to leave as much room for ideas as possible. One is still missing, but it's the important central one, the one the first draft was written so you could find and build around it in the second. You don't want to end by asking, hands in the air, how can we fix this? You have taken experience and brought it to law school, and now is not too soon to ask what you want to do next about it. What sorts of lawyers lead lives that in your opinion can put them somewhere near how to fix it? Which of those lawyers will you start imagining yourself first? What would she need to get started? How will she make her practice profitable?

Yes, answers to these questions in the second term of law school are not yet realistic: there's plenty to learn with realism before being realistic. But you are ready to put your imagination in "Drive," because you have some idea where you want to go.

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