Education Adequacy VS Education Equity

            Education adequacy is defined as a legal approach that ensures educational opportunities to poorer students based on state constitution guarantees for efficient, thorough, and uniform education (Sadker A-13). It is an approach that seeks to find the minimum a school and student must have and know in order to provide that for them. It is not something that ensures those poorer students receive the same quality and level of education that more wealthy students receive; it is not “education equity”.

            One of the reasons all schools are not created equal, though the students attending them are deemed so under the Constitution, is that the money funding those schools comes from the tax-payers. In a system where property taxes fund the school of the children paying those property taxes a wealthy neighborhood will have a more funded school compared to the school of a poorer neighborhood. Those who lobby for education equity seek a funding system that pools the money of both the poor and the wealthy neighborhood and divides the money between the two schools in such a way that the students of each receives a similar quality of education. This kind of system tends to meet resistance from the wealthier parents who subscribe to a form of education Darwinism. To these parents they have earned the money they pay into their school and thereby earned a better education for their offspring. The poorer parents argue that their children are equal citizens and should receive equal “protection” for their right to education in the form of monetary help. Poorer schools without this help may end up with inadequate books, unqualified teachers (Sadker 306), and therefore an inadequate education preventing the students from attaining a method of escaping the poverty cycle.

            Attaining educational equity between schools is obviously a difficult matter. Some states have made steps to improve the educational situation of the impoverished by creating legislation for more adequate education but the terms are general may be interpreted in a variety of ways. Some states require “sound basic” education, and others “thorough”, some “efficient” (Sadker 309). Without statistical data on monetary requirements of schools and legislation towards meeting that requirement, these “standards” are little more than hopeful goals.

Sadker, David Miller. Teachers, Schools, and Society, 2010 McGraw-Hill. New York.

Image: "South Carolina public school funding 2009-2010" Posted on July 8, 2009. Accessed 2012 Nov 27. [http://thevoiceforschoolchoice.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/south-carolina-public-school-funding-2009-2010/]