Equal Opportunity Education or Equitable Education?

“Equality of Education” does not mean we have “Equity of Education.” Many times politicians and educators alike hold discussions about the topics without a true understanding of the real difference between the two. At the same time, they make the mistake of envisioning the two topics as one and the same. However, they are completely different ideas! I can spend “equal” amounts of money to educate a child in different surroundings and get completely unrelated results. As a matter of fact, many times children of poverty and minorities have more “dollars” spent on their education with second-rate results. This should certainly cause us to question what is being done with the “dollars” that are being billed to the education of children. What we must strive for is “Equity of Education.” We want “all” children to learn and perform well. If we measure children’s learning we should get the same results for all our students no matter their economic standing or ethnicity. Teachers say that they present their learning materials to “all” their students “equally” and it is the student’s “responsibility” to “learn” it through “hard work” and “applying” themselves. We certainly want to teach children responsibility and hard work as critical to success in life, however, responsibility and hard work alone does not “cause” learning. Acting responsibly and applying themselves does not equal “learning ability,” nor does it take into account cultural differences and the impact of poverty on individual learning no matter what race. Students may “apply” themselves and “work hard” every day and still not end up with “equity of education.” Without the proper educational tools and the proper training in place educators will not succeed in getting equity in their results. The performance gaps just keep growing wider if not taken into account in the classroom daily. Many educators today will argue that they are equal opportunity educators and they resent being told that they are ineffective because their results are skewed. The problem is that going into a classroom and teaching everyone there the material as a teacher deems appropriate does not provide “equity” in results as proven when tests are given and when seniors can graduate from school without even being able to read.