Teach For America: Eliminating the Gaps and Inequalities in Education (229 hits)
Four months ago, Jamila Best was still in college. Two months ago, she started training to become a teacher. Monday morning, the 21-year-old will walk into a D.C. classroom, take a deep breath and dive into one of the most difficult assignments in public education. From student to teacher, in five weeks...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/22/AR2010082202893.html
Teach For America provides a critical source of well-trained teachers who are helping break the cycle of educational inequity. Best is one of 4,500 Teach for America recruits placed in public schools this year after five weeks of summer preparation. These teachers, called corps members, commit to teach for two years in one of 39 urban and rural regions across the country, going above and beyond traditional expectations to help their students to achieve at high levels.
A National Injustice In America today, educational disparities limit the life prospects of the 13 million children growing up in poverty, impacting their earning potential, voter participation, civic engagement, and community involvement. These disparities disproportionately impact African-American, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American children, who are three times as likely to live in a low-income area.
•By the time they're in fourth grade, children growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities. •About 50 percent of students in low-income communities will not graduate from high school by the time they're 18 years old. •Those who do graduate will perform on average at an eighth-grade level. •Of the 13 million children growing up in poverty, only 1 in 10 will graduate from college.
The educational inequity that persists along socioeconomic and racial lines is a great injustice in our country. Why does this problem exist? We believe that educational inequity is the result of three interrelated factors:
We believe that educational inequity is the result of three interrelated factors:
•Children growing up in low-income communities face extra challenges. While all children have the same potential to achieve, children in low-income communities often contend with inadequate health care, nutrition, and/or housing, and often lack access to high-quality pre-schools.
•Schools and school systems lack sufficient capacity to meet students’ extra needs. There aren’t enough hours in the school day to catch students up academically when they are significantly behind, and there aren’t the same academic enrichment opportunities that exist in higher-income areas. Many talented and dedicated people work in our schools and communities, but there still is not a critical mass of exceptional teachers and school leaders who deeply believe that all students in low-income communities can achieve at high levels.
•Our prevailing ideology hasn’t led to necessary policies and investments. Our education system is hampered by the widespread belief that schools can’t make a significant difference in the face of our country’s socioeconomic disparities. This belief is fueled by the misperception that students in low-income communities cannot meet high expectations. The result has been a reluctance to invest in mitigating the challenges of poverty that make it harder for students to focus at school. It doesn't have to be this way.
While the problem of educational inequity is daunting, we see evidence every day in classrooms across the country that when students in low-income communities are given the educational opportunities they deserve, they excel on an absolute scale. Together, we can solve this problem.
Read about Teach For America's approach to solving this problem
