American schools are faced with inequality, especially in the distribution of resources between poor and wealthy families. In her article "Why American schools are even more unequal than we thought," Susan Dynarski, a writer at the New York Times, analyzes a new dimension of economic hardship. She argues that the government tends to utilize the eligibility for subsidized means to measure a learner's economic background. However, it should not be the case to differentiate between poor and wealthy learners. The piece demonstrates that there is a more challenging aspect of the attainment gap between American's wealthiest and poorest children.
Dynarski ensures that she sets the stage using allusion, where she explains that districts, schools, and the government use wrong measures to tackle economic hardships. She references the point of whether economic disadvantage is a standard of measure. Also, the criteria used to select children's eligibility in acquiring a reduced price or as a free meal in school. She provides an evidence-based solution as she explains how subsidized meals are shared in schools, stating that “nearly half of the students nationwide are eligible for subsidized meals in schools” (Dynaski, 2016). She continues to give the percentages on the threshold that is eligible for reduced price meals in a manner the reader can understand.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Throughout the article, Dynarski uses robust sources that strengthen her integrity and appeal to ethos to build a substantial argument. Some of her sources are the National Assessment of Education Progress, which is in line with the Nation's Report Card founded under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. She also analyzed data from the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research with the help of Michelmore, who is a postdoctoral researcher. She demonstrated that in Michigan, children come from poor backgrounds and a few of them are eligible for subsidized meals. These poor children score lower grades in mathematics, thus, as the achievement gap widens persistently among disadvantaged children. Poor children all end scoring below average.
Additionally, Dynarski adds logic to her text. Dynarski uses strong logic with numerous facts, statistics, and logical development notions. According to Dynarski (2016), “education researchers who usually express the existing differences in standard deviations, allowing for a consistent measure of opportunities across populations, contexts, and tests.” She explains that the disadvantaged students, using the conventional approach, have a gap between them and the privileged students. She aligns firm logos appeals by making demonstration to pathos in the mid-phase of the article. She poses a question asking for an explanation of why subsidized meals' eligibility serves as an excellent measure to show the disadvantaged children's challenges.
Towards the end of the article, I believe she fails to maintain the same level of effectiveness in the appeals to ethos. She disapproves that no individual decides that the subsidized lunch's eligibility is the ultimate manner of measuring the learner's economic disadvantage. She depicts that the metric used came to become a default form in distinguishing between the rich and poor learners.
Although Dynarski starts the essay by effectively persuading the readers of inequality in American schools, she argues that there is an unequal distribution of resources among schools. Subsidization of meals should not be a criterion to measure performance. For instance, only eligible district schools comprise learners from the richest backgrounds. She concludes by claiming that schools with more underprivileged learners get little resources while requiring more than schools with privileged learners.
Reference
Dynarski, S. (2016, August 14). Why American schools are even more unequal than we thought .The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/upshot/why-american-schools-are- even-more-unequal-than-we-thought.html
