Proposal
For my research essay, I will be focusing on the lack of education throughout the world and the detrimental effects it causes. Overall, the rich children are more benefited than the poor when it comes to education for the rich families can provide more resources and money into education than the poor families can. Due to this, there is a major catastrophic learning gap between poor and rich students. This is a huge step backwards considering education was once a tool that neutralized education and brought people from different areas together to learn efficiently.
This issue worries me tremendously since I am currently in school to become a teacher. I have heard stories of children not being able to attend school because the prices are too high in their area. In my research, I hope to find the reasons why the system has shifted so greatly, ways to prevent the lack of education from happening even more,and most importantly, how to get back to where education once was- an education all children deserve to have and have a right to attain.
Sources
The Essential Content of the Article: Even in a wealthy state, some children still attend poor schools. Students are in need of extra help, yet are offered less than what is efficient. The system is “inadequately funded” and needs a change. Opportunity is not given to each student evenly due to the economical differences. Poor students show a lower success rate. This article in particular is talking about Connecticut and how perhaps the problem there is how education was founded in the country and how it is structured. It used to be efficient for students back then, but it no longer provides enough today. This article goes back hundreds of years to how education used to be distributed and that is why I have chosen this article.
What it Proves: There is a dramatic difference with schooling back then and schooling today, perhaps we need to reflect on the past to improve the present. Also, this proves even more how poor schools influence children and their success.
The Essential Content of the Article: This article dives further into the idea that the education gap is not only just in black and white students,but is now affecting the rich and the poor children. Studies have shown that the gap between rich and poor children and their test scores has increased by 40% since the 1960’s, an era that focused primarily on skin tone and not how much income your family made. People are saying that perhaps the recession widened the gap even more than it was already, and due to the decreasing economy, it may increase even more, while others are saying the difference comes from a variety of different things.
What it Proves: This article has solid statistics and numbers and ideas that will help people understand the dramatic increase in the gap and the inequality of learning due to income.
3. http://education.seattlepi.com/disadvantages-facing-poor-community-public-schools-2182.html
The Essential Content of the Article: This article covers the disadvantages that poor communities face due to their schooling system and will help me in arguing that children from low income families deserve more. Children coming from these schools are often less prepared and struggle with family connections.
What it Proves: The many disadvantages listed in the article and the background info on each of them will provide me with more reasons why education needs to be equal. Poor community schooling does not offer enough to children.
Essential Content of Article: Reasons why there is such a huge gap between poor and rich communities and how different “solutions” people thought would work are not working. It provides insight as to ideas on how to truly eliminate the issue.
What it Proves: One of my main ideas for the paper was to figure out how the education system has changed so much over the years. This article provides some good topics and information that lead to the decline of the system and helps me figure out what produced such a great divide.
Essential Content of Article: More of an insight as to why American schools are even more unequal than we may think already. Students are performing at lower levels than ever before, and the economic disadvantage has the most significant role in a child’s schooling success. Scores end up to be even lower than predicted. The gap is about a third larger than a typical gap. There are linear relationships to the failing economy and math scores, and more and more children are falling behind. There are statistics that even go back as far as the children’s parents and their education.
What it Proves: Schools need a change and more resources.
6. https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/widening-academic-achievement-gap-between-rich-and-poor-new-evidence-and-possible
Essential Content of Article: Discusses family socioeconomic characteristics and the difference in academic success over the last 50 years. Income achievement gap is the “Average achievement difference between a child from a family at the 90th percentile of the family income distribution and a child from a family at the 10th percentile”. It is now double the black-white gap, a gap that used to be one and a half to two times larger than the income achievement gap.
What it Proves: The relationship between income and achievement has grown tremendously and income is now a deciding factor for children’s success.
7. https://www.brookings.edu/research/income-and-education-as-predictors-of-childrens-school-readiness/
Essential Content of Article: Studies have shown huge gaps when testing school readiness in young children due to income of their families and also material education. Most children from a poor, low-income family perform poorer than those from a high-income family. A test is being conducted to test how children perform and why- what causes the poor performance>
What it Proves: Income plays a huge role in the success of young children.
8. https://www.childfund.org/about-us/education/
Essential Content of Article : The lack of education could lead to a lifetime full of struggles, hardships, and difficulties. It is hard for children to accomplish more things when they lack a full education. A program called ChildFund India raises money for children’s needs for schooling. In most areas where ChildFund is, schooling itself is free, but the uniforms, books, buses, are often too expensive for families to pay.
What it Proves: The significance of a good education and what it can do for children in the long run.
9. http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/3049-how-one-school-is-fighting-poverty
Essential Content of Article: One in six students live in poverty. A middle school in North Carolina is taking a stand against poverty. People are working together to ensure that the children have a better life by being in a classroom. The school hangs inspirational signs throughout the halls to make the students know that they have a future and that they can achieve it. This article lists ways to fight back against school poverty.
What it Proves: There is hope! We must fight back and encourage students to have faith.
10. https://edsource.org/2014/community-schools-can-help-break-the-cycle-of-poverty/57633
Essential Content of Article: The Local Control Funding Formula has a goal to improve the outcome of successful students and to give local schools more of a say as to how they spend their education dollars. Investment is another thing we need to focus on- where all the money goes. If it does not go towards the children, it is going to the wrong place. Community schools are bringing food clinics, health clinics, and extra curricular activities onto school grounds in hopes to create the school the children deserve. There are community based services as well, for the kids are often struggling with something. Their needs are addressed so that they can learn, and the teachers can teach.
What it Proves: Poverty creates learning blockades for children. We need to find a way around those blockades to ensure these children have the education they need.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
There’s a mistake here that ruins the logic of your sentence, AO. I don’t know how to read it correctly, but I do know education can’t neutralize education.
I also note a profound and deeply felt ethical claim here that something about the current situation is fundamentally UNFAIR:
Let’s start there, AO. My heart approves of your heart. You’ll provide the Pathos because your heart bleeds for the kids who don’t get a fair shake. You’ll provide the Ethos because you blame an UNFAIR SYSTEM for depriving students what they DESERVE. Maybe I can help you work in the Logos by concentrating on the reasoning.
Where your Logos is currently lacking: In your description of your first source, you fail to actually make a claim that anyone could understand:
HOW education is structured and HOW it is distributed are probably VERY important to our argument. But you haven’t told us HOW it’s structured and distributed. That’s the place for Logos.
Your second source says the unequal gains in education have SOMETHING to do with skin tone, or SOMETHING to do with income. Probably true. But until you detail the SOMETHING, along with the HOW of unequal distribution of educational opportunity, your argument will be purely theoretical.
AO, you make the same mistake describing your third source that I pointed out to you in notes about your class notes. You TALK ABOUT disadvantages without sharing the information on disadvantages. You say:
If you’re following my thread, I won’t have to reiterate the same comments about sources four and five. As the semester continues, you’ll recognize how vague your claims are, and why they need to be much more specific to be persuasive.
BUT
You asked me specifically how to focus your Definition/Categorical Argument.
SUGGESTION. Follow your heart. You feel deeply that every child DESERVES something you haven’t quite specified out of education. That’s a purely ethical or moral argument that you can easily tackle in a Definition Argument. What’s FAIR in public education? What’s UNFAIR? Does every society OWE a free public education to every citizen/resident? Once we promise one, do we create an obligation that it continue forever? If so, where does that obligation come from? How do we measure whether the obligation is being met? IS IT being met when the local community spends its own valuable but limited resources to educate the kids in the neighborhood? Or does the nation have a different and larger obligation? to equally fund and support education at ALL PUBLIC schools so EVERY CHILD gets a similar opportunity for quality education regardless of where she’s born or resides?
Why is this important? You can’t argue that something needs to be done to FIX A BROKEN SYSTEM until you demonstrate that the system FAILS TO MEET ITS ETHICAL OBLIGATIONS.
The Fourteenth Amendment provides Equal Protection under the Law to all citizens.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitutional/amendmentxiv
It’s not the only logical approach to proving an ethical obligation (maybe also a legal obligation), but it’s pretty effective, AO. No system of funding public education is permitted by law to deprive citizens of “equal protection.” Look around for sources that detail legal attempts to overturn America’s HIGHLY UNEQUAL system of funding public education through local property taxes.
Here’s one:
http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/aurl52&div=51&id=&page=
I hope you find this helpful, AO. Your paper is important, and I understand the concept of a Definition Essay is not immediately obvious. You’ll be using logic to demonstrate that public funding through local property taxes is Unfair.
Classic Definition:
PROPERTY TAXES = UNEQUAL FUNDING FOR RICH AND POOR NEIGHBORHOODS
FUNDING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION = INEQUALITY BASED ON RESIDENCE
UNEQUALLY FUNDED SCHOOLS = FUNDAMENTAL UNFAIRNESS.
Good luck AO.
(I thrive on feedback and conversation. Please respond if you want to hear from me in the future.)
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This comment helped a whole lot, thank you for providing me so many of your thoughts and ideas. I will get working on my definition argument now that I have inspiration and a guidance as to what direction I should go in. Thank you again!
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Haven’t seen your Definition Argument yet, AO. Need some more inspiration first? 🙂
[Get this done before we go on spring break. You want to have 3000 words in the bank by then so that when we come back, you can concentrate on organizing and revising your long essay.]
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