Are the Wealthiest Entitled to the Best Education?

Most people would say that all students deserve an equal education despite their socioeconomic status or class, but that is not usually how it actually is. Those that have less money usually live in urban settings and send their children to inner-city schools. The truth is that inner-city schools don’t provide the same education that suburban or private schools do. “Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs.” The same is true about graduation rates of inner-city schools and private schools. Wealthier families often live in suburbs where the schools are better or they are able to afford transportation to a better performing schools or tuition for a private school. Those with less money are not able to afford that “luxury” to their children, and have to send them to the local inner-city school. The best education shouldn’t only be available to the wealthiest families. This is a social injustice that needs to come to an end.

Some argue that graduation rates cannot not be looked at to determine if public schools are actually better than private schools because private schools can be selective about the students that they accept, but then that raises the question of why suburban schools have higher graduation rates than inner-city schools. The issue comes down to funding. Suburban and private schools have more money available to them so they are able to then give more resources to students such as more support teachers in struggling areas such as reading and math and smaller class sizes.

It is unfair to watch students in lower socioeconomic classes hope that they get lucky and are accepted into one of the limited spots at a successful school in their area, like was seen in the documentary “Waiting for Superman.” A way needs to be found to spread out the funding to schools more equally so that students in urban communities have access to a quality education.

Big Cities Battle Dismal Graduation Rates
Comparison of Private and Public Schools
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