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Of What's The Real Reason So Many Urban Schools Fail By D. Scott Schwartz

628 Words3 Pages

The news article I chose to analyze was “What’s the Real Reason so Many Urban Schools Fail? ?” written by D. Scott Schwartz. Schwartz claims to be an expert in the field of education with 20 years of academic research and work in the K-12 system in New Jersey. However, upon examining this article, I chose to redact this headline for several critical reasons. I will begin by examining the different issues I detected within the article, identifying them, explaining the reasons, and offering my suggestions. The first concern, and the reason I chose to investigate this article, lies within the title. The title uses the word “fail”. While it may seem harmless, I find this specific word to actually be quite problematic. It carries negative connotations and stigmas that devalue the students and staff …show more content…

Now, this is also part of a larger language issue seen throughout the article. Further on, Schwartz uses the term “achievement gap”, which is an outdated term that places the blame on individuals, neglecting the impacts of the systemic issues that give rise to disparities in educational achievement. In my redaction, I would change the title to: “How Structural Inequalities Impact Urban Schools: A Call for Change”, and replace the term “achievement gap” with “education debt”. The second and main reason I am choosing to redact this headline is that attribution errors are rampant throughout this article. This is the most concerning reason, as they perpetuate and reinforce stereotypes and misconceptions about urban schools. Schwartz continues to attribute the struggles of urban schools to solely internal factors, dismissing and overlooking the broader issue of structural inequalities, systemic racism, and underfunding that leads to the negative outcomes we too often see. Reducing the struggles to internal factors contributes to a deficit and problematic understanding of urban

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