Is America’s public education system heading towards crisis?

 
Stephen Jordan, writing for Inside Higher Ed, tackles this question—offering a dire assessment of America’s secondary and higher educational apparatus.

Jordan finds urban high schools and state-colleges are failing their students. The three-pronged assault of dwindling funding, raising tuition, and growing accountability standards have harshly afflicted urban areas: where students cannot keep pace with raising fees. 

But has this led to a new color line in America’s education system?

Jordan writes,

But what about the conventional student of color who graduates from an urban high school and whose achievements are more modest? These are the students — place-bound, often of limited economic status and whose preparation for college is less rigorous — who are largely served by our public urban institutions. In sheer numbers, they dwarf the students of color who attend the more prestigious institutions.

Urban low-income and students of color are coming to college with severe academic deficiencies, particularly in the areas of writing, mathematics and science. Furthermore, many students from economically challenged backgrounds lack college-going family precedent or role models. It is critical that these students have access to full-time faculty of the same ethnic background to serve as peer mentors, helping them navigate the transition from high school to college.

Jordan finds this net-effect: “Options for low-income and students of color, in high school and college, are becoming separate but not equal to those for white students.”

Jordan’s article is required reading for anyone seeking a fuller context to debates raging over school busing and affirmative action.

Questions for the forum: How should progressives combat classical liberal arguments that paint busing and affirmative action programs as reverse discrimination? Are presidential candidates speaking to these issues? Is growing concern over higher ed costs creating a possible progressive constituency on educational issues?