Opportunity Gap

According to the 2015 Building a Grad Nation report, low-income high school students are graduating at a rate 15 percentage points behind their more affluent peers. The graduation rate is decreasing because of a problem that is affecting more and more students which is the opportunity gap. The opportunity gap is a barrier that low-income and minority students encounter when wanting to be educationally successful. The opportunity gap enlarges when students are lacking in resources, services, and experiences. This problem is mostly occurring to low-income and minorities students because they don’t have the advantages to afford the same resources as the privileged students. Because the opportunity gap creates inequality, minority and low-income

The American Dream is not equally available for everyone as children are affected by their financial problems. “For many of these kids, family income may have a stronger impact on their futures than individual work ethic. That’s not the American Dream we promised them,”said John Gomperts. This idea provides evidence that low-income students opportunities are limited by the amount of money their family has. This idea helps us understand the power money has towards the success of failure of students is stronger than we thought. Rodriguez had just entered junior high school in an area where there were more low-income than white students. “In the mid-1960s, the students at Garvey had some of the worst academic scores in the state. Most of the time, there were no pencils or paper”(Rodriguez 43). This fact provides evidence that students who were not provided with school supplies had some of the worst academic scores. This fact helps us understand that low-income students could not afford supplies which cause them to have a higher risk in failing

Some teachers of low-income and minority students have not received their graduate degree, are uncertified, or are assigned to courses they are not been formally prepared to teach. “26 percent of Latino eighth-graders had math teachers who lacked certification and at least a minor in math, compared to 17 percent of white students”(Challenges 2). This fact provides insight into Latino students because they were assigned teachers who weren’t fully qualified to teach them, in comparison the white students rarely had teachers who weren’t fully trained to teach. This fact helps us understand the opportunity gap because it displays how Latino students are given different educational chances; compared to white pupils towards the quality and type of resources each student receives.

The opportunity gap is a gap that affects students who are minorities and low-income from receiving educational success.You can distinguish when an opportunity gap is occuring when you observe standarized test scores, grades, and drop out rates. Because the opportunity gap creates inequality, minority and low-income students need supportive teachers. Students know that they will succeed in school if supportive teachers help reduce the gap. They would engage and help their students in any way such as provide supplies to those who