Urban Education—Historical Antecedents

Education is a unique welfare institution because it is not viewed as serving the poor but rather as a path of upward mobility, self-improvement, better jobs and economic opportunities. The present reality is that educational systems are drastically split between serving poor children in the inner city and affluent children in the suburbs. The urban school systems, once perceived as avenues of mobility enabling poor children to rise from the ghettos, and believed to be the foundation of the American way of life, appear incapable of doing so.

The solutions suggested for these problems are many, ranging from designing more relevant curriculum for city students to national financing of education to provide more equitable distribution of resources. Reform efforts have included school decentralization, compensatory education, and alternate schools, but the success of these innovations is difficult to assess.