EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY ALONG RACIAL LINES

Educational Inequality Along Racial Lines

Educational Inequality Along Racial Lines

In American public education, the status quo is a system that explicitly favors the offspring of the wealthy over poor and minority children. Because local governments provide almost half of the cost of K-12 education, differences in wealth among communities translate into disparate levels of resources for schools. Some affluent suburban school districts spend two or three times more on the education of their children than either urban or rural communities can afford.

In the case of the urban/suburban comparison, these differences also break down along racial lines, with public policy consequently favoring the education of white children over minorities. Critic Jonathan Kozol has called the system "apartheid education."(Allen, 2009)

If one applies More's standard, the institutional Catholic church has signaled tacit consent to the injustices in the public system. While church leaders have spoken aggressively to the needs of Catholic schools, there has been only discrete silence, or, at most, ambiguous statements of general principles concerning the way America's public schools provide differing educational opportunities based on class and race.

During the past 25 years, legal and political challenges to this system have defined the burning social justice issue in the arena of educational policy. Despite all the sound and fury devoted to proposals such as vouchers, national standards and school safety, most experts agree that the bulk of poor and minority students will not receive educations comparable to what is available in America's best suburban schools, either public or private, until this deeper structural question of funding is resolved (Allen, 2009).

The U.S. Catholic Conference, the official voice of the country's bishops, has said nothing directly on the issue. Officials at 10 state Catholic Conferences, all in states that have been the focus of litigation and heated political controversy, were contacted for this article. Not one had issued a position paper, filed an amicus curiae brief or taken any other public action to demonstrate support for the cause of educational justice.

It's not that the leadership of the church is opposed to the idea of fairness for poor and minority children. To a person, every official contacted for this article regards the present system as morally objectionable. Nor is it the case that individual Catholics, acting out of deeply held faith convictions, haven't spoken to the need for justice. The point, however, is that these individual reactions have yet to be translated ...