The Financial Inequities Found in Schools Today

Not everyone affords education - and not everyone gets to go to school. This is depressing, for education, they say, is what will help a person in sustaining himself throughout his life. So if one student failed to be educated for financial reasons, how else would he make a better living for himself? How else would he live?

Unlike other countries wherein students are expected to be just students, in America where education is very pricey, students have to work for them to be able to continue their education. American students have a lot more things going on with them than most students in other countries. And because of the hard times, some students ought to stop schooling or forego continuing their studies to be able to work and earn for themselves. Though it may assure such student that he can sustain himself from thereon, it contradicts the principle that education is for all, regardless of who you are and how much it is.

The question of whether education is a right or a privilege can be traced back to a student's capacity to pay for his education. If all schools are free, then it'll be easy to say that education is a right - but as already stated earlier, it is not and that it is actually expensive - then is it, therefore, a privilege? A privilege that only the wealthy and the financially-blessed can avail of? In the events of today, it is safe to say that education is both a right and a privilege.

Everyone deserves to be educated, but not everyone gets to. This is where the financial inequities found in schools today come in. In high school, everyone gets to study - that's their right. But where you study could be a privilege. Public high school is free for all. Private institutions are not. Some say that the education provided by private academies is better than that of in public schools because students are well-focused on and teachers are more experienced and knowledgeable. Private schools are deemed to be better not only because of their exclusive nature, but also because of the big bucks parents pay for their children to belong to such institutions. If that is the case (with private schools being better) then education is a privilege - but it borderlines being born-lucky and injustice.

Financial status should never be a standard of what type of education a student must receive. Just because one student's parents cannot afford to send him to a private institution does not mean that the child is less good than that of those students whose parents are able to send them to private schools. He might even be better in academics than the others; he may have been the school's star athlete if he was only given the chance, the opportunity� Education is an opportunity and not an option.

Education is not a choice, it should be one student's only choice. To say that everyone will someday have excellent education in equal standing is very impossible but to say that everyone should be given an equal opportunity to receive an education is better. School should be aware of this ugly inequity and start working around it.

As the children's guardians in their "second-home", they should be taught from the beginning that everyone is equal. That regardless of their parents' incomes or how big their house is or how much the clothes they wear are, they are all equal in their pursuit of educating themselves. Children should be, from the start, informed that once they live on their own, without their parents' money, they and the kids who owned less during school will have to learn together; because in the real world, everyone has to start from scratch.

Educational Literature on Financial Equity Issues

Capital Outlay: A Critical Concern in Rural Education- ERIC Document
Economic Support for Education in Rural School Districts- ERIC Digest
Equity and Adequacy in Educational Finance- ERIC Digest
Financial Equity in the Schools- ERIC Document
Poverty and Learning- ERIC Document
Title I as a Reform Strategy in Urban Schools- ERIC Digest
Urban School Finance: The Quest for Equal Educational Opportunity- ERIC Document