Too often, low-income minority students end up in schools with crumbling classrooms, torn textbooks, and tired teachers. These inequities are caused because schools are mostly funded with state and local tax dollars.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 92 percent of funding comes from non-federal sources, thus the education available to millions of American public school students is unequal.
Particularly in the South, a history of racism and social inequities have resulted in a persistent hierarchy which has cost people of color and low-income students from accessing opportunity within education.
Racial Disparities Start Early
The United States has a long history of segregation and racism in education systems, and disparities still persist today. In April 2017, a court ruling in Alabama allowed a predominantly white suburb of Gardendale to form its own school district and break away from its more diversified Jefferson County District.
This is just one of many examples of public schools increasingly becoming serrated, more than they were in the 1970s. Minority and low-income student are more likely to attend schools with other minorities and low-income students.
According the U.S. Department of Education, black students are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers, and in Southern schools, racial disparities are even greater. A 2016 report from the University of Pennsylvania Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education found that 13 Southern states were responsible for the 55 percent of the 1.2 million suspensions involving black student nationwide.
Southern states also accounted for 50 percent of expulsions involving black students nationally, according to the report Disproportionate Impact of K-12 School Suspension and Expulsion on Black Students in Southern States. The report found that in 84 Southern school districts, 100 percent of students suspended were black.
The racial biases black children face, and the correlated high suspension rates result in black children missing a lot of school; causing them to fall behind in school, resulting in these student not reading at grade level by third grade, and eventually dropping out of school.
When the education system pushes these students out of class, their chances of having contact with the criminal justice system increases. Punitive discipline is also correlated with one of the reasons suicides among black boys is rising according to a 2015 study. Black girls too are more likely than other female students to be suspended or expelled as well.