Research Outline

I.                    Introduction

A.      Everybody in the United States has the same education, not depending on their social status or their income.

B.      Here in the United States are different classes with people that have a different income. Some of these people are getting a different education and the question is how these two topics are related.

C.      How does having a low income or limited opportunities affect a student's education in the United States?

II.                  Equality in school finance reform

A.      There are large differences in per-pupil spending money among school districts in the same state

1.“By eliminating the large differences in per-pupil spending among school districts in the same state, it would have leveled the playing field between high-spending versus low-spending districts.”

B.      Student’s education in poorly funded public school districts are getting affected

1.“School finance reform would have dismantled this system that typically relegates children from poor communities to low-quality public schools (and, as is less often publicly recognized, reserves the best public schools for children in affluent communities).”

III.                School choice and how money can affect your school choice

A.      Program which includes vouchers for the parents with not a lot of money. These vouchers cover the full cost of tuition, and the money used to pay for them follows students to their schools.

1.“Vouchers and charters, magnet schools, and even publicly financed home schooling-almost every state, major school district, and large city has some sort of school-choice program or is considering one.”

B.      These programs are not really effective because they are small and not popular yet.

1.“The theory of school choice, as popularized by economist Milton Friedman, looks like a clean solution to the problem of poor-performing schools and the underachieving students who attend them.”

2.“The problem is that, even with the increasing number of school-choice programs nationwide, Friedman's notion remains mostly theoretical.”

IV.                School choices and the effects on student’s health

A.      Many schoolchildren in the United States have to go to a certain school because they do not have enough money to go somewhere else

1.Similarly, little attention is paid to the fact that the "good" education privileged children generally get needs to be a better education than what is available to most others.

B.      At that school they are then exposed on an almost daily basis to environmental hazards including volatile organic chemicals, airborne lead and asbestos, and noise pollution while they are at school

1.“The building impacted the health of 40% of the students and teachers," estimates John Santilli, chief of allergy and immunology at the nearby St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, who treated many of the afflicted pupils and staff over the years.”

2.“At least one teacher who was heavily exposed is on permanent disability, and others experienced breast cancers and miscarriages that Santilli says might be linked to exposure to secondary mold metabolites called mycotoxins, but more study is needed.”

C.      Few federal laws currently protect students from such threats but several states have adopted measures that address these issues

1.” But if our goal is to make significant progress in closing the gap in resources and opportunities between our best and worst schools, we need to do more than tinker around the edges of the current system.”

2.“We need to muster the political will and build the political coalitions necessary to make such a re-examination of the fundamentals possible.”

V.                  Charter schools’ education

A.      Is the education in those school is as good as in a public or private school?

1.“While only about 30 percent of Florida's charter schools met the standards last year, that figure was a mere 14 percent for public schools overall.”

B.      A charter school is a school which receives money from the government and therefore there are a lot of students that do not have a lot of money.

C.      Charter school are becoming more popular and in some parts of the US they are considered a mainstream form of education

1.“With more than 1.7 million students enrolled in nearly 5,500 schools and federal funding on the rise, charter schools are now widely considered a mainstream form of education”

VI.                College education and the costs

A.      College costs a lot of money and it is impossible for low-income families to afford college nowadays.

B.      The US should refocus on class and not just on racial issues.

1.“We made a lot of progress at the racial front but the dirty little secret of higher education has been that we have not addressed economic diversities”

2.“The outlook for low-income students is not good in a short term.”

C.      The number of low-income students attending college has increased a lot but the number of middle class students attending college has decreased.

1.“From the students that are going to college today are 3 percent low-income students and 45 very rich students, so it is more likely to run into a very rich student at colleges than into a poor student.”

VII.              Conclusion

A.      How does having a low income or limited opportunities affect a student's education in the United States?

B.      My first subtopic is about equalizing school reform because there are large differences in per-pupil spending money among school districts in the same state and how much money a student’s spends affects his/ her education. The next two subtopics are about how money affects a student’s school choice and how his/her school choice can even affect a student’s health. Good schools are expensive and a student with a low income cannot afford that; he has to go to a less expensive school and those schools are often not in a good condition. My article talks about one particular school. At that school they are then exposed on an almost daily basis to environmental hazards including volatile organic chemicals, airborne lead and asbestos, and noise pollution while they are at school.
The next subtopic is about Charter schools and if the education in charter schools is as good as in a regular public or private school. And the last subtopic talks about programs that could help students with a low income to still get a good education. The source that I used is especially about programs like that for colleges.

C.      My overall opinion is that money and especially a low income affect a student’s education in the United States a lot. Not having a lot of money leads to limited opportunities and influences a student’s school choice. The school choice affects a student’s education and as you can see in my example it can also affect his/ her health.

I think that it is good that there are opportunities and programs that are supposed to help students with a low income but I think that there are not enough programs like that. My article for example talks about how colleges like Harvard have programs like that but not every student is able to go to a university like Harvard and that is not just because of their income and that they cannot afford it.

D.     In the future people should pay more attention on classes and not just on racial issues. There should be more programs that help students with a low income. But I think that there is always going to be issues like that and problems with money influencing someone’s education. But if people focus more on solving that problem and create more programs and not just for colleges like Harvard but also for regular public schools it could get better in the future. But what if nobody is going to work on that issue?