How inequality in wealth reflects educational achievement in the US - Essay Example

The education standards in the U.S. can be defined along many demographic parameters, but according to reviews by authors who are going to be considered, in this paper, the most prominent factors that affect education attainment in the United States is race, ethnicity, social economic background and citizenship status. This paper compares and contrasts the three authors’ different views, and opinions on what contributes to the disparaging gaps witnessed and evidenced by various researches and studies carried out to establish the cause of this disparity.

Different authors have diverse views on the real causes of disparity. Therefore, this paper is going to use the authors’ different perspectives to improve the understanding of how inequality affects academic achievement in the U.S. Wealth in most societies across the globe is measured using material possessions like money, property and net worth. Wealth translates into status or class in society of which in today’s modern world, there exists the upper class or the rich, the middle class and lower class or the poor.

These three levels significantly influence an individual’s way of life from what they eat, wear and their residential area. It also determines their lifestyle, which it can be comfortable, simple or difficult depending on how much money they have. In today’s world, money is everything even to those who do not believe in its power finds it being a necessary concession to their survival. The modern society is significantly controlled by parameters that are gauged on the level of education that an individual has achieved.

This implies that the more educational qualifications that one has, the more their chances of success in life increase and vice versa. According to Jenks, educational achievement is determined by an individual’s wealth status. He brings out the notion that a higher social status, which is mostly brought about by having a lot of money guarantees a better and more successful educational attainment (Morgan, 2005). He attributes this to the fact that wealth enables students gain access to better educational facilities and materials where there are more qualified instructors.

He further argues that students who come from financially stable backgrounds have better chances of going to better colleges than those who come from poor families. According to Jenks, rich students get the opportunity to go to 4-year colleges, which are more prestigious and fit the class of the rich compared to poor students who are more likely to attend 2-year community colleges because they are less prestigious and affordable. Unlike Jencks, Farkas considers race to be the most influential factor in determining success in education because the black-white test score gap affects the way the white people bring up their children, which is also different from the way black people bring up their children.

He attributes this difference to the dissimilarity witnessed by the two race’s performance in academics. His review elicits the notion that white