Personal Narrative: My Mother's Fight Against Education Inequality In America

Great Essays
My Mother’s Fight Against Education Inequality in America
Inequality, as a concept is hard to quantify but, the disparity between the rich and poor in education is concrete. As America slides down the ranks in education on the world stage, the underprivileged youth suffers. In America, the land of opportunity, poor children still must overcome their socioeconomic status to receive an education equal to their richer counterparts. Education is more than an opportunity; it is a fundamental right. In United States of America, no child should be denied a great education no matter their parent’s income or what city they live in.
These were the beliefs that inspired Christine Suma, my mom, mother of twelve, and lifelong Clevelander to enter her children into the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program in 1995. Starting out as a lottery that Cleveland parents entered in the hopes of securing funding to escape the Cleveland Municipal School district, it soon became the beginning of a national movement, School Choice. Children can’t control the income levels of their parents but School Choice gives them an opportunity to level the playing field, although all were not in favor.
District Court Judge Solomon Oliver deemed the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program unconstitutional in 1999. He stated it was in violation of the separation
…show more content…
Through School Choice, low-income families have alternatives to the public school system. As my mother’s youngest child her efforts guaranteed me a spot in Our Lady of Good Counsel’s kindergarten allowing me and my siblings to attend a good school without financial strain on my family. As fate would have it my mom gave her first speech while she was pregnant with me on the Statehouse steps in downtown Columbus. Now, because of her efforts in the fight for education I have come full circle, and I am able to complete my higher education at Ohio

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Introduction The documentary Children in America’s Schools, based on Jonathan Kozol’s book titled “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools”, compares Ohio’s richest and poorest schools by exposing the monumental affects local property taxes have on the quality of education for students. Collapsed ceilings, torn textbooks and overcrowded classrooms describe the schools in the impoverished districts. The schools in wealthier districts have advanced facilities, with computer labs, Olympic sized pools, robotics labs, and advanced courses. These discrepancies are a result of local property taxes funding schools.…

    • 191 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Diversity Hero Kickbusch

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Diversity Hero Consuelo Castillo Kichbusch Biographical information. Born and raised along the border in a small barrio in Laredo, Texas, Kickbusch overcame poverty, discrimination, and illiteracy to become the successful community leader she is today. Although she grew up without material wealth, her path to success all began with inspiration from her father. As a Mexican immigrant, he always felt that he had to earn his place in the United States and he worked to convey that message to all ten of his children.…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The “culture of poverty” mindset creates a distances between the impoverished and the wealthy. Ehrenreich provides the term “culture of poverty” as exemplified in Michael Harrington's The Other America. This work is the foundation in which Ehrenreich reveals the reality of poverty and the misconceptions of the term. There is the idea that “The poor were different from the rest of us, it argued, radically different, and not just in the sense that they were deprived, disadvantaged, poorly housed, or poorly fed.”(607) This idea promotes that if adults with different economic backgrounds are totally different why would their children differ.…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Brown Vs. the board of education case had a major effect on numerous other similar cases. This case cased numerous individuals to see that the separation between educations was futile and did not help the children's education. It likewise did not offer the racism some assistance with going on at the time. In the 1950's, public places were segregated.…

    • 1431 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. Under the Texas state education system, public elementary schools and secondary schools are financed by both federal and local funds. The Establishment of the Texas Minimum Foundation School Program was made to guarantee a basic educational offering to each child in the state of Texas. In addition to this program, each school district was required to provide additional principal for education, based on an ad valorem tax on property within its jurisdiction. The State supplies about 80% of the funds, while the individual school districts are responsible for the other 20% through taxes.…

    • 966 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Today, however, the No Child Left Behind law and the Race to the Top program have undermined this ideal curriculum and restricted it to only the most affluent communities (107).” This block of text gets the audience to think of how unfair…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kandice Sumner's Ted Talk

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Kandice Sumner’s Ted Talk, she suggests that we should give equal education to communities regardless of their wealth. Kandice is a teacher and passionately explains to us why American Education is not helping people in poor communities. She tells us a story about her childhood. Since both her parents were educated and placed a lot of value in education and Kandice was lucky enough to be in a desegregation program where she was driven on an hour long bus ride to a school in the wealthier neighborhood. During her school years, she noticed several things concerning her schooling and the schooling of her peers.…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Kandice Sumner’s Ted Talk, “How America’s Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty”, she composes a well-constructed argument, concerning the issue of improperly and unequally distributed funding and resources to schools. Specifically, schools that are in low income and increased “colored” areas. Although I agree with her point of view that there should be a more structured and equally supplied school budget with necessary resources, I do not believe that the inequality is targeted to students of color and poverty –stricken areas. Growing up in a lower-economic and social class area, Ms. Sumner has the experience to speak for her community in saying that, “Because of this lack of wealth, we lived in a neighborhood that lacked wealth, and henceforth…

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Kandice Sumner’s Ted Talk, How America's public schools keep kids in poverty, she passionately delivers a message about the “education debt” (Sumner, 2015) that many schools, especially those in poor neighborhoods are suffering from. Through her experience as a both a teacher and a student, she constructs an influential speech that argues that we need to help and change the school system, as to include kids of minority races and give equal opportunities to each and every student. Unlike some kids, I have lived outside of New Mexico, I have experienced different things, gone to different schools, and seen different cultures. I have seen the difference in resources, first-hand, in which some of the schools I have been to had many resources…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this specific case, I believe that the multiple issues presented in American Promise have proven that the mission of education is succeeding in reproducing social and economic inequalities. As I have previously explained in my paper, the American Dream is a dominant ideology that states, freedom, opportunity, and social mobility can be achieved equally through hard work. However, the academic and social struggles that Idris and Seun experienced at the Dalton School proves that “whole groups of people are increasingly privileged or constrained by their family’s wealth histories” (Johnson 1); that reveals the socio-structural problem of the racial wealth gap. Race in the Classroom and Linguistic Reproduction…

    • 1137 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Over the past several decades, a disparity in the achievement of low-income schools and high-income schools has slowly hurt the United States. As someone who experienced life near a neighborhood that featured low-income schools, their situation becomes more understandable. The economically disadvantaged students in low-income schools are frequent victims of an issue that has plagued the United States for many years. In these schools, they are presented with many disadvantages that hurt their futures and wastes taxpayer money.…

    • 934 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Inequality in Education We live in a world with many problems that seriously need to be addressed. As a college student today, it sometimes seems that every issue is on the brink of destruction to the greater population. Today, you hear of many political, social, economic, and environmental issues that seem to be too large and complicated of a task for all of us to really come together and fix. This is mainly due to the widespread mindset of our culture and how we choose to either recognize or not recognize something that isn’t right in the world, and thus a shift in our thinking is required to make the necessary change.…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Education in the United States went through great reform in the late 1800s to 1900s. Change didn’t come about easy and educational equality is still a popular debate today. Although educational change was talked about and seemingly in progress, equality still had a long way to go. Differences in racial and social classes became prevalent especially through schooling. Black Americans were limited and restrained with obstacles such as what schools they were allowed to attend, what classes they were to take, and by what the teachers were taught to educate on.…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The school experience for any race can be considered challenging. There are many supporting statistics that state it is more challenging for African Americans to succeed in school. There are also opinions stating the reason for the underachieving African American students is their parents. A lot of skeptics tend to blame black parents when their child doesn’t excel in academics as well as the other races. Dr. Andre Perry defends the black parents and gives examples of how they are active and care about their kids’ education.…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Students who live in poverty are often struggling with many issues besides going to school. The use of equity can help improve students well being in school. Students may come to school hungry, abused or tired, which can affect the class and teacher.…

    • 1080 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays