Our nation's greatest injustice
In America today, educational inequity persists along socioeconomic and racial lines.
- Fourth graders growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities1.
- About 50 percent of them won't graduate from high school by the time they're 18 years old1.
- Those who do graduate will perform on average at an eighth-grade level1.
- Only 1 in 10 will graduate from college2.
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These educational disparities unfairly limit the life prospects of the 13 million children growing up in poverty today, impacting their earning potential, voter participation, civic engagement and community involvement. Moreover, these disparities disproportionately impact African-American, Latino/Hispanic, and Native American children, who are three times as likely to live in a low-income area3.
Why does this problem exist?
We believe that educational inequity is the result of three interrelated factors:
- Children growing up in low-income communities face extra challenges. All children have the same potential to achieve. Children in low-income communities, however, often face challenges such as inadequate health care, nutrition, or housing, and lack of access to high-quality pre-school.
- Schools and school systems lack sufficient capacity to meet students’ extra needs. For instance, there aren’t sufficient hours in the school day to catch up students who start out behind, there are not enough teachers and leaders in schools serving low-income children who deeply believe their students can achieve at high levels, and there are not enough high-quality enrichment opportunities like those that exist in higher-income areas.
- Our prevailing ideology hasn’t led to necessary policies and investments. There is unfortunately a societal belief that schools can’t make a significant difference in the face of socioeconomic disparities, that children of color cannot meet high expectations, and that it is not worthwhile 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 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.
Read about Teach For America's approach to solving this problem
Hear corps members and alumni talk about their personal views on this issue.
1 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2005
2 Mortenson, Tom. “Family Income and Higher Education Opportunity,” Postsecondary Education Opportunity, 2005
3 National Center for Children in Poverty, 2006
Our nation's greatest injustice
Corps and Alumni