EDUCATION
WHAT YOU CAN DO
.As we all slowly come to grips with the fact
that our education system is actually
perpetuating inequality instead of reducing it,
many of us will get angry enough to want to
do something about it. And quite frankly, as a
college educated student there is a lot you can
do to to be a part of the change. Below are
just a few possible ways you can join the fight
against educational inequity.
Teach For America
Teach For America, or TFA, is a
program that recruits the best
and the brightest college
students of all majors to commit
two years of their lives to
teaching in low-income schools.
If you apply and are accepted
you will be trained in a rigorous
six week program where you are
essentially taught how to teach.
From there you will be placed in one of the 50+ lowincome communities Teach For America works in. (You
get to rank locations during the application process)
While in your community you are a full-time teacher,
with full-time salary and benefits. You are just as real of
an educator as the teacher in the classroom next to
you.
City Year
City Year is a program that
shares many similar goals with
TFA. Both work in low-income
communities with the goal of
decreasing the achievement gap
and sending more kids to
college. However, where they
differ is in their approach. City
Year corps members do not run
their own classroom, instead
they work in schools as tutors,
mentors, and role models.
Furthermore, City Year is a little less controversial and a
one year commitment instead of two. It’s a great
program for people who want to be a part of the solution
but do not feel equipped to run their own classroom.
More
While TFA and City Year are two of the
most well known programs there are
tons of other ways to get
involved.While all these programs are
worthy and noble I do recognize that
not everyone is going to be able to
fight educational inequity head on.
But at the very least you should be
informed on current reforms
.I’m sure it’s easy to read through all of this and conclude
that education is just a hot sticky mess in America and want
to run as far away from it as possible. But you can run all
the way to the middle of Pennsylvania and it’s still going to
pop up in your petty day to day small talk.
Whether we like it or not, the educational inequality
problem is a problem for all of us. But if we attack the
problem head on, some day a Penn State student might roll
her eyes and say…”I’m from inside of Philadelphia, just like
everybody else.”
RISE | 8
WHY YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS LIVE
"RIGHT OUTSIDE OF PHILLY"
By NATHAN GOLDEN
So where are you from? “Just outside of Philly.”
This is a snippet of awkward small talk that you’ve had countless times at Penn State.
It has even become a little bit of a running joke on campus. Students often claim to
be outside of Philadelphia “just like everyone else.”
But what about the students that live inside Philadelphia? The 131,000 students that
attend Philadelphia Public Schools every year? Why aren’t they more represented at
Penn State?
The story is in the statistics.
The most recent data shows that only 10% of students in Philadelphia Public Schools
go on to graduate from college. Even worse is that only 64% of the cities students
are graduating high school on time.
Some of the Philadelphia Public School’s I’ve been in look more like prisons than
schools. Kids have gym and lunch in the same room. First grade teachers don’t have
any books.
However, this daunting inequality is not just a Philadelphia problem. Educational
inequity is a problem that haunts the entire United States. Furthermore, students
attending failing schools tend to be disproportionately black and Latino. It’s been
written about thousands of times.
Ask anybody who has worked in education long enough to tell you that the number
one predictor of a child’s academic success is not ability or work ethic, it’s their zip
code.
While these stories and statistics may sound dismal, graduation rates are actually a
lot higher from years past. Rising from 52% to 64% in Philadelphia in just eight
years.
Rising graduation rates are certainly no accident. They can be attributed to pure
deliberate effort from students, teachers and community members alike. But in
order to continue to reduce inequality and give all children the education they
deserve it’s going to take even more intentional effort from all of us.