Inequality In Education

by Stuart Shapiro

Last week I posted about how child care quality worsens inequality.  Let’s now move on to what happens in elementary and secondary school.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially. . .

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well…

If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

We are trapped in a very dangerous cycle.  Inequality propagates itself and unless we move quickly we will follow other societies that have shown growing inequality into the ranks of has-beens.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.