Problem Solvers for an Inner City Education

It's hard to believe that in this current age, one of the wealthiest nations in the whole world lacks the ability to properly give all of its youth a worthwhile education. Although almost every child goes through the same grade levels, many children, especially those from run down urban areas, do not receive a quality education. America has the greatest amount of knowledge at its fingertips that it has ever seen due to technological advances, and still many children and adolescents are illiterate. Even though a child from a suburb school and one from a inner city school graduate from grade school, the child from the suburb might be up to two years ahead of the other in reading, writing, and mathematics (1). The problems with associated with inner city schools, which are usually full of minority children living in poverty, can only be solved with outside help.

Poorer residential areas in America are more likely to be located in the inner cities across the nation. Since most of the funding for schools comes from property taxes, those living in poor areas of the nation must also attend schools that lack the money and government funding that would otherwise help urban children receive an equal education as those who attend rural and suburban schools. The lack of money at these schools causes shortages on books, offered classes, extracurricular activities, and qualified teachers (2). The teachers may be new or lack the proper knowledge to teach. The teachers who are working in these school systems do not necessarily choose to work there, but may take what positions they can get because they have no other alternative. The problem with minorities in inner cities schools seems to be recycling itself. The parents of these children are products of the same system of education. They may not have seen any good come from their education when they were the same age. Therefore they are not showing great concern for their children to be educated in a system that failed to educate them.

Although areas with low education cannot be linked to high amounts of poverty, areas with high amounts of poverty can lead to lower levels of education (3,p167). This is a depressing fact to think about, because children who grow up in areas suffering from poverty are not likely to learn the skills to be successful in life. They more often than not continue living in poverty because there aren't many jobs left in America that desire people with basic skills (1). "Nearly twenty percent of all children under the age of 18 are poor. Two thirds of poor Americans are white, but the rate of poverty is considerably higher for minorities. Four out of nine black children are poor, and three out of eight Hispanic children are poor. (1)" The facts speak for themselves that this direct correlation of poverty and social mobilization is a difficult life situation to overcome.

The government has tried to help inopportune families by issuing them school vouchers to enable them to have an option for a better education. The school voucher can sometimes give a family the chance in sending a child to a private school rather than to an inner city public school (4). The school voucher may not allow an underprivileged child to afford a middle-class private school, but it may give its family a chance to send him or her to a religious affiliated school. But school vouchers do not solve the educational problems that exist inside inner city schools (4).

The federal government should renovate lower-class school systems. This may bring teachers to the system without having to beg them to come. The environment may