As time goes on, and the American education system progresses, there has been a substantial widening in achievement gaps between rich and poor students. This widening exists for a variety of reasons, not the least of which includes greater access to higher quality education services among the rich, including private schools and tutoring. While the problems between race distinctions (black and white students having a large achievement gap) have more or less leveled off, these have been replaced by larger differences between rich and poor (Tavernise, 2012). This is not a fair practice at all, as rich students benefit from advantages that poor students are not able to utilize; this makes the playing field for education biased in favor of who has money and time to expand their knowledge base.
One of the biggest consequences for this increasing gap in achievement and education is a stagnation of social mobility. "Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults" (Tavernise, 2012). However, now that these gaps are growing wider, and the blame has been placed on the growing recession. The economic downturn has hit everyone of every social class, but it hit poor people the hardest, with home foreclosures and the like making the feasibility of poor students going to college past high school an increasingly unlikely scenario. Given these limited options for educational advancement, there exist few to no means for economically disadvantaged students to bridge these achievement gaps.
There are those who may say that this achievement gap is fair, and is totally in line with how rich they are: they are likely rich because they have what it takes to succeed, and poor people simply do not have the intelligence to achieve as much as rich people can. To that I say that it is an unfair assessment of peoples' intelligence; the factors surrounding a rich child and poor child's lives are substantially different, with different priorities and resources from which they can draw. A rich child can benefit from spending all of their time among expensive tutors and instructors, with specialized training and extracurricular programs. However, poor children may not have enough money to attend a public university, much less a private one; furthermore, other time commitments (such as working or providing for other disadvantaged members of their families) may take time away from studying and learning. This is a completely unfair system that does not reward those who are truly the most intelligent or resourceful, but instead those who have the most money.
In conclusion, the widening achievement gap between rich and poor is an unfair trend brought upon by significant income disparities and economic disadvantages, which provide undue pressure and complications for poor people. These complications prevent poor people from receiving the education necessary to achieve, while rich students' abilities and resources to achieve increase steadily. This system prevents poor people from being able to catch up, and creates a firmly entrenched class system that does not provide equitable treatment to people of all classes. Given the unfairness of the achievement gap, initiatives should ideally be taken to create more equitable initiatives and cost-effective ways to bring education levels of the poor up to the levels of the rich.
Works Cited
Tavernise, Sabrina. "Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say." New York
Times. 9 Feb 2012. Print.
Unequal Education: Failing our Children. National PBS Broadcast, 1992. Film.
