Education Debt

I have many concerns in regards to the educational system and its history of educating students of color, particularly African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. I am not overly concerned with the terms used to describe the situation; although I do see the difference in referring to the issue of disproportionate numbers of minority youth not having access to high quality learning opportunities as “educational debt” as opposed to the “achievement gap”.

What I wonder about the most are the intentions of the people who make the decisions regarding public education. I wonder if they really believe that they are doing what is best for all children, if they are only concerned with what happens to a certain segment of the population, or if they care at all about any of the youth their decisions impact. I wonder if getting caught up in arguing about the semantics of the phrases used to describe the issue is an intended distraction from the issue itself; I also wonder if popularizing the use of the term “educational debt” instead of “achievement gap” would cause anyone to act any differently.

When I hear people say things like, “I use the term ‘achievement gap’, I do it because I’m so use to saying it”, it makes me think about people’s actions, and how much of what they do is based on how they have been more or less conditioned to think and act in a certain way.

You would think that many decisions that do not seem to have the best interest of the youth in mind could be justified by simple economics. But the cost estimates from the Closing the Gap: Early Childhood Education article on the ASCD website state otherwise, noting that “conservative cost-benefit models show that for an initial investment of roughly $15,000 per child, the return to society was roughly $250,000, or $17 for every dollar invested” (Nelson).

The only reason that makes even the slightest bit of since as to why the public is not strongly advocating for investing in early childhood education is that are simply not aware of the cost advantages of doing so. You would like to think that the welfare of children should be enough motivation, but it obviously is not since the current system is operating as it has been for years with little resistance. I will do my best to help change that by spreading the word about the benefits – both social and economic – of investing in children’s education early on.