Background Information: Analytical Entry

Throughout America’s history, providing students with an equal education has always been an issue. If education continues to follow on the path that it is currently on, educational opportunities will continuously be taken away from the children of America. Education has always been a very important part of society. From the end of the American Revolution to present day education has been the idea of creating a general knowledge among the people. The problem that has been created is that, as time went on the quality of schools as decreased and the expectation of a higher common knowledge has increased. The settlers “felt that all people needed to have a basic education for the good of their souls and the community” (Cremin, Education) and to achieve that through home and public education. The idea of a basic education is shown today through state standardize testing, it represents a common knowledge. Over the years it has become harder and harder to reach that knowledge. What did they do? First, Thomas Jefferson created the separation of church and state in public schools. This created public schools which is described as “never adopted as he envisioned” (Boorstin, Thomas). The next, they looked at why public education was losing quality and why it ended up not working as was first versioned. The problem started when they integrated schools and during the time of civil rights. As they forced blacks to not have a high-income this basically required blacks to move into low-income areas. With blacks creating low-income communities, it created low income schools. This created another problem, which was providing an unequal education for blacks and whites. The government knew something had to be done about this because America just fought a long war to prevent blacks and whites from being separate. Over time and consideration the government adopted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Act’s purpose was to "help provide an accelerated, high-quality curriculum, including applied learning" (Elementary).” The act was supposed to help provide funds for low-income and high needs schools to make them equal to schools where taxes in the community were higher for schools. At first this act seemed to answer a lot of problems and questions about education. It can clearly be seen that the act puts together a lot of bold statements that the government has failed to keep. The act allows the youth of America to have the right to an education, but fails them to provide them with an equal education. This relates back to the civil rights in the sense that during a time of severe racism, there were busses, schools, bathrooms, and train cars given to blacks so both black and whites have them but they were not equal. Decades later, blacks and minorities in a sense are still separate and unequal to whites in terms of education and the government fails to realize this. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act first statements purpose is “helping disadvantaged children meet high-standards” (Elementary). The government has tried to help disadvantaged children meet high-standards over and over again but have failed over and over again. The government needs to figure out and see that they are the reason why many kids have become disadvantaged and they need to fix it. The government needs to step back and retrace their steps they first took. They need to look and why education ended up being so unequal and get to the real reason why it happened.