Equity

Blog Post (After watching Unequal Education)

Discuss one question, confusion, or "I wonder...." you have from watching the video.

This is not a question but more of like a concern, it still amazes me the difference in opportunities that minority students receive from “white” students.

Are Lonnie and James very different children? How do their environments affect them?

They’re different kids because of their environments, Lonnie lives in a harsher environment than James and I think that has to do a lot with the opportunities that both of the students have. Lonnie has a lot of things going on around him that I think are affecting their education. In the video they talked about how he was scared about going out at night to empty the garbage can; there are other things outside of school that are more important to him than school. If I was in his situation I think that it would be pretty hard to focus in school with all those things going around me. On the other hand James didn’t seem to have to worry about anything else around his environment so I think it would be easier to focus on school.

What is different or unequal about the two schools? How do opportunities to learn differ? How do teacher expectations differ? How might these contribute to the achievement gap?

The differences between the schools are the amount of resources available to the students as well as the staff. In Lonnie’s school the teachers didn’t even have the credentials to be teachers, the experiments in the classroom were pretty simple due to the lack of resources available to the students. In James’ school they had microscopes and their teachers were licensed and even “fought” for the position. I also feel like teachers in inner-city schools also hold lower standards for minority and low SEC students.

Based on what you know about motivation and learning, why might students from Riverdale be more likely to succeed academically? What can you see happening to Lonnie in the video (especially towards the end)?

I feel like they would be more motivated because the teachers were more licensed than the teachers at South Fordham. The amount of resources available to them and how the teachers at Riverdale actually want them to succeed is also another factor that affects the students’ success. I think that it would be harder for Lonnie to stay in school because he has so much stuff going around him that it will be so hard to focus on school. Since he feels like he doesn’t learn much in school and doesn’t think that he’s going to do any better he might lose interest in school and therefore quit trying and eventually drop out.