Socioeconomic Status And Inequality

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Leveling the Playing Field: Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement The fixed inequalities perpetuated by a student’s family socioeconomic status make it extremely hard for students to successfully achieve academically. Students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds are given the short end of the stick from the start. This is something that is further exacerbated by the inequalities within the United States public school system. Public schools are unequal. This may be because of their location, being in two different states or being in two different neighborhoods. Students in less developed states or communities do not receive the same resources or access to resources as students from other communities and states. This may also …show more content…
In doing so, we attempt to define socioeconomic status and offer examples of inequalities while finding correlation between socioeconomic status and inequality. In their widely published textbook on education psychology, Lisa Bohlin, Cheryl Durwin, and Marla Reese-Weber define socioeconomic status as “the status of a family household that relies on the education level and occupation of family members rather than their level of income” (14). In further examining socioeconomic status, scholars began to classify students with regards to their socioeconomic status. Lower socioeconomic status students’ being those students that come from families that are under educated and therefore work lower paying jobs. On the other hand, students with higher socioeconomic statuses are those students that come from households with very educated parents who work in higher paying jobs resulting in greater family income. Socioeconomic status has strong correlations to poverty, race, and living conditions. Students from these lower socioeconomic status households are primarily the students who live in poverty and are from minority backgrounds. Nevertheless, the same students from these lower socioeconomic status backgrounds are put at greater risk whenever they are forced to attend public schools that are fundamentally …show more content…
In John Rawls’ “Theory of Justice”, he speaks of the idea of an original position of equality. In many ways, this position is similar to a nationally mandated level playing field because it treats all students as equal. This also relates back to Peter Singer as he discusses morality. He states “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (Singer, 231). These two concepts relate because socioeconomic status and the inequality of schools are very dangerous and can potentially be detrimental to students, as seen in the Bud Ferillo’s film. Therefore, if we see this as an issue, we should use justice in order to fix this. We can no longer continue to sit back and watch students achieve less than their potential when we have the ability to help them. This is why equality is so

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