Stage 6

I read an editorial/commentary article by my fellow classmate, Stephanie Jeannett, about the problem of inequalities when it comes to public education. She begins by informing her audience of her educational background. She comes from a a public school district that seems to be pretty well off, as she notes she grew up in a “white suburbia bubble” and that she was “privileged to attend.” She states how she didnt understand the reasoning behind why other school districts weren’t as well off, but that she understood the cause behind the inequality after listening to an NPR “This American Life” segment. She goes on to talk about how segregation still lives on in the American Educational system, describing how school districts that tend to reflect poorly in the ranks are typically minority occupied schools. She states that these school districts do not receive the same funding that school districts such as her own did. I had a few problems with these claims, not because I don’t believe they could be true, but because they lacked any sort of empirical evidence to back them up. I felt as though she hadn’t looked too well into the causalities behind lower ranking schools, and quickly blamed their lower rankings on lack of government funding. This cause sounds likely to me, but I don’t find it wise to just write this off as the cause without little factual backing. I also felt similarly about her proposed solutions to these problems. While they sound as if they could be effective, I don’t feel as if she took into account how public school receive government funding. I may be wrong, but I do believe that public school funds are allocated by the powers of the state government, not the national government. I feel like this would call for a much more specific approach that would need to be different for different states an localities. I have also read that schools in areas that aren’t as well off receive more state funds, and that teachers receive higher wages than at public schools in higher class areas. I can’t say this with all certainty, but I do believe there should have been more factual backing to these propositions as well as statistics included in the editorial. With her second solution, I didn’t quite understand what she meant by “integrating” schools again, and there was little elaboration on what that entails and how integration may be carried out. She articulates that she believes part of the solution would be to change racist ideals and policies in the governments. Again, I had problem with such an ardent claim because of the lack of elaboration on what racist policies exist to limit benefits from poor minorities in public school systems. I am not at all saying this couldn’t be true, but in some ways, the author diminishes their credibility by not expanding on these claims. Overall, I appreciated the passion and concern of the editorial, as I feel like this is important when writing about something you care about. However, I had my doubts about the legitimacy of many of the claims stated throughout the article, and I felt like it took away from her opinion and the credibility.