Education

In America, schools are funded based on property tax. If white neighborhoods are richer than black ones than it's not hard to guess what comes next. Schools in African American neighborhoods are funded at significantly lower amounts than white neighborhoods. These statistics equate to lower graduation rates, lower test scores, and lower opportunities. It is obvious that the education system treats minorities unfairly, as one source said “A 10 percentage-point increase in the share of nonwhite students in a school is associated with a $75 decrease in per-student spending,” a 2012 analysis of Department Education data by the Center For American Progress found” (Goyette). This quote shows how big of a role white students contribute to school funding, as each individual student receives less money spent on them with the absence of white students. From this information, it is easy to infer that schools with a higher African American population receives less funding. This results in lower quality education, as another research company said “Even within urban school districts, schools with high concentrations of low-income and minority students receive fewer instructional resources than others. And tracking systems exacerbate these inequalities by segregating many low-income and minority students within schools. In combination, these policies leave minority students with fewer and lower-quality books, curriculum materials, laboratories, and computers; significantly larger class sizes; less qualified and experienced teachers; and less access to the high-quality curriculum” (Darling-Hammond). All of these factors contribute to the high dropout rate, which is 31% for African Americans, but only 9% for whites. This shows just some of the many inequalities in our education system today. Although this is not the cause of the wage gap, it still plays a huge role in the Racial Wealth gap, as many African Americans don't have the same opportunity to go to college and enter the workplace with quality education. This is another unfortunate but realistic outcome of redlining, as redlining forced black into poorer neighborhoods, which meant that schools in African American communities were not funded sufficiently.