In 1993, there were more African-American citizens on probation, in jail, in prison, or on parole (1,985,000) than there were in college (1,412,000) (U.S. While schools in California have experienced continuous cutbacks over the last decade, the prison population there has increased by more than 300%. The situation is worse in some parts of the country. During the same decade, per pupil expenditures for schools grew by only about 26% in real dollar terms, and much less in cities (NCES, 1994). Nationwide, during the 1980s, federal, state, and local expenditures for corrections grew by over 900%, and for prosecution and legal services by more than 1000% (Miller, 1997), while prison populations more than doubled (U.S. National investments in the last decade have tipped heavily toward incarceration rather than education. Women who have not finished high school are much more likely than others to be on welfare, while men are much more likely to be in prison. In addition, working class young people and adults who were prepared for the disappearing jobs of the past teeter on the brink of downward social mobility.īecause the economy can no longer absorb many unskilled workers at decent wages, lack of education is increasingly linked to crime and welfare dependency. Those who do not succeed in school are becoming part of a growing underclass, cut off from productive engagement in society. Among African-American high school graduates not enrolled in college, only 42% were employed in 1993, as compared with 72% of white graduates. Even recent graduates from high school struggle to find jobs.
In 1993, a recent school dropout who was black had only a one in four chance of being employed, whereas the odds for his or her white counterpart were about 50% (NCES, 1995, p. The effects of dropping out are much worse for young people of color than for whites.
Whereas a high school dropout had two chances out of three of getting a job 20 years ago, today he or she has less than one chance out of three, and the job he or she can get pays less than half of what would have been earned 20 years earlier (WT Grant Foundation, 1988). More than ever before in our nation's history, education is not only the ticket to economic success, but also to basic survival. The end results of these educational inequalities are increasingly tragic. In combination, policies associated with school funding, resource allocations, and tracking leave minority students with fewer and lower-quality books, curriculum materials, laboratories, and computers significantly larger class sizes less qualified and experienced teachers and less access to high-quality curriculum.
And tracking systems exacerbate these inequalities by segregating many low-income and minority students within schools (Kozol, 1991 Taylor & Piche, 1991). Not only do funding systems allocate fewer resources to poor urban districts than to their suburban neighbors, but studies consistently show that, within these districts, schools with high concentrations of low-income and “minority” students receive fewer instructional resources than others in the same district. Recent analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, and Texas have found that on every tangible measure-from qualified teachers to curriculum offerings-schools serving greater numbers of students of color had significantly fewer resources than schools serving mostly white students. Poor and minority students are concentrated in the least well-funded schools, most of which are located in central cities or rural areas and funded at levels substantially below those of neighboring suburban districts. In contrast to European and Asian nations that fund schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10% of school districts in the United States spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10%, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. educational system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and that students routinely receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their social status. Despite the rhetoric of American equality, the school experiences of African-American and other “minority” students in the United States continue to be substantially separate and unequal.
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