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doi: 10.1111/josi.12187pmid: N/A
This article builds on the national school funding fairness report annually produced by the Education Law Center (ELC) of New Jersey. This article expands prior analyses in two directions. First, while ELC analyses evaluate only the most recent 3 years of data, we track school funding progressiveness (the relative targeting of funding to districts serving economically disadvantaged children) for all states from 1993 to 2012. Second, this article explores in greater depth the consequences of school funding levels, distributions and changes for specific classroom resources provided in schools. The analyses presented herein validate that variations in available revenues and expenditures are associated with variations in children's access to real resources—as measured by the competitiveness of the wages paid to their teachers and by pupil‐to‐teacher ratios and class sizes.
Acs, Gregory; Martin, Steven; Schwabish, Jonathan A.; Sawhill, Isabel V.
doi: 10.1111/josi.12188pmid: N/A
Persistently high poverty among families with children, a lack of equal opportunity, stalled intergenerational mobility, and inequality have all risen up the agenda for federal, state, and local policymakers. Children born into low‐income families face barriers to success in each stage of life from birth till age 40. Using data on a representative group of American children and a life cycle model to track their progress from the earliest years through school and beyond, we show that well‐evaluated, targeted interventions can close over 80% of the gap between more and less advantaged children in the proportion that ends up middle class by middle age. These interventions can also greatly improve social mobility and enhance the lifetime incomes of less advantaged children.
doi: 10.1111/josi.12189pmid: N/A
Research over the last 50 years have been remarkably consistent when it comes to addressing education inequality: background factors like family and socioeconomics matter to school success. Yet policies remain narrowly focused on school‐based reforms like testing, standards, and charter schools due in large part to the American public's limited understanding of education and inequality. I argue that scholars, as the experts, are ultimately responsible for changing how policymakers and the public think about these issues—a duty they have yet to embrace. In this connection, the use of framing can help education researchers broaden attitudes and stimulate political will. Drawing mainly from disciplines outside education, this article explores the potential of framing as a communication tool for education scholars. Specifically, I examine how it has been used in science, political, and marketing communication to broaden public opinion. I also offer ways to frame the issue of education inequality to help the public, including decision makers and influencers, conceive of solutions and opportunities beyond the status quo.
Schleicher, Andreas; Zoido, Pablo
doi: 10.1111/josi.12190pmid: N/A
How does equality of education opportunity compare globally? What policy options do different countries have when trying to improve performance and tackle inequality at the same time? What policies are countries implementing? These are some of the questions this article addresses. While the article does not provide definitive answers, or one‐size fits all solutions, it does paint a picture of what different countries are achieving in terms of reducing education inequalities and how when trying to provide all students regardless of background with equal educational opportunity, thus enhancing social mobility.
doi: 10.1111/josi.12191pmid: N/A
The “achievement gap” as a symptom of persistent social inequity has plagued American education and society for decades. The vast chasm in academic achievement has long existed along racial and poverty lines. Children of color and from low‐income families have, on average, performed worse on virtually all indicators of academic success: standardized test scores, high school graduation rates, and college matriculation rates. This gap perpetuates the existing inequalities in society. Efforts to close the achievement gap have had little effect. The gap remains and has actually widened. This article argues the gap is symptomatic of the deficit‐driven education paradigm. Fixing the traditional paradigm is unlikely to close the gap because the paradigm reinforce and reproduces educational and social inequity by design. To work toward more educational and social equity, we need to adopt a different paradigm of education. The new paradigm should work on cultivating strengths of individual students instead of fixing their deficits.
doi: 10.1111/josi.12192pmid: N/A
As the movement to raise academic standards has grown over the past 25 years, so has the notion grown that the primary purpose of the American high school is to prepare all students for college. High school students and their families have increasingly bought into the notion that the only legitimate destination after high school is “college.” The “college for all” mantra has to some degree been fueled by the dire predictions of economists that we were headed into a world in which there were only going to be two kinds of jobs: high‐skill, high‐wage jobs for those with at least a 4‐year degree; and low‐wage, low‐skill jobs for everyone else. The career pathways movement—based on the premise that everyone needs something beyond a high school diploma but not necessarily a 4‐year degree, and designed to connect young people to middle‐skill jobs in such growing fields as information technology, health care, and advanced manufacturing—offers a promising route to upward mobility for those young people not well served by our current education system.
Mistry, Rashmita S.; Nenadal, Lindsey; Griffin, Katherine M.; Zimmerman, Frederick J.; Cochran, Hasmik Avetisian; Thomas, Carla‐Anne; Wilson, Christopher
doi: 10.1111/josi.12193pmid: N/A
This study evaluated the efficacy of an inquiry‐based poverty curriculum unit on students’ beliefs about causes of poverty, economic mobility, and helping behaviors. Participants were 89 kindergarten, first‐ and second‐grade students (mean age = 6.81 years, SD = .93) across two intervention and two control classrooms. Students in intervention classrooms participated in a 5‐ to 7‐week curriculum unit focused on poverty. Preintervention results showed no differences in outcomes by condition. Postintervention results indicated that, compared to the control condition, students in the intervention were more likely to say that poverty is malleable over time and less likely to suggest giving money to poor families as a way to help. There were no differences, however, by condition in the types of causal attributions that students provided (i.e., individualistic, fatalistic, and structural). Implications for theory and educational practice regarding teaching about economic inequality and mobility are discussed.
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