Disparities in education may provide some explanation for the racial wealth gap that exists in Chicago. Specifically, the process in which resources are allocated to different neighborhoods across the city widens the gap in educational achievement that may impact economic outcomes later in life. In Peter Hancock’s article, ‘Money Matters: How School Funding Inequities Affect Students, Taxpayers’, he states that in Chicago, “school districts with large amounts of property wealth were better funded than their property-poor counterparts, enabling them to spend more money per pupil”, which “ translated into higher test scores in math and English language arts” (Hancock). Since minority residents in Chicago are more commonly concentrated in areas with lower property wealth, then they are subjected to receive less funding for education when compared to more wealthy neighborhoods that are more populated by white people. The correlation between more funding and higher test scores demonstrates how significant and impactful funding is when it comes to a student’s education. If students in poor neighborhoods received more funding, then they can potentially perform higher on standardized tests and put them on a more steady path towards attaining higher education.
Furthermore, according to his article, there are substantial differences in standardized testing performance between low and high income students. He writes that “[a]t the high school level, being in a district at the top of the funding scale translates to 100 additional points on the SAT” and “[a]t the elementary level, students in districts that rank in the top 20% of the funding scale are more than twice as likely as students in the bottom 20% to meet state standards on math” (Hancock). Those with higher standardized testing scores will most likely find it easier to get into top universities that yield better student outcomes. The current method of school funding, giving more resources to districts with high property values, puts low-income students at a disadvantage when it comes to higher education which may impact their financial statuses later on in life.
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Different opportunities for early childhood education may provide further reasoning for the wealth gap that exists in Chicago. The impacts of early childhood education is demonstrated in the Perry Preschool Project conducted in Michigan in which at-risk African American children were split into two groups: those who received high quality early childhood education and those who did not. Those students who were placed in better education “scored higher on achievement test, attained higher levels of education, required less special education, earned better wages, had better physical health, were more likely to own a home, and were less likely to go on welfare or be incarcerated than other children of similar backgrounds” (“Early Childhood Education Can Pay Big Rewards to Families, Society”). Low-income families may not have the resources to send their children to higher quality preschool compared to those who have higher incomes, and if the type of school has been shown to make a difference in a child’s life later on, then low-income children are put at a disadvantage. Higher wages and home ownership can increase the quality of life for many individuals and the influence of quality of preschool education demonstrates how some children cannot attain wealth as easily as their white counterparts.
The importance of preschool education is further demonstrated when observing the effects of the children of the test subjects within the experiment. According to the study, “new data found positive outcomes continued in the next generation” as from the subjects’ children, “60% were never addicted or arrested; and 59% were employed full-time or were self-employed” (“Early Childhood Education Can Pay Big Rewards to Families, Society”). They benefits preschool education had on future generations suggests that those who do not have the same quality of education do not have the same levels of success and wealth later on in life.
In Chicago, however, achieving higher levels of education can have a significant impact on one’s ability to accumulate wealth, but this is largely impacted by race. According to A Tale of Three Cities: The State of Racial Justice in Chicago Report by the University of Illinois at Chicago, “[s]lightly more than 40% of black and Latinx college grad
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