Education Gap: The Smart-Get-Smarter Model
Mitigating the socio-economic gap between various communities has been a huge priority for education movements for decades now, but the problem still persists. Racial disparities are still a huge cause of unequal opportunity in this country, but in terms of education, the biggest factor seems to be class, according to Sean Reardon of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford. The more well off parents are able to give their children more opportunities for educational growth and domestic stability that poorer children might not have. This difference just serves to make the wealthier children even more educated and in the future give them better access to jobs and higher income. Eduardo Porter, the author of this article, mentions that it is indeed possible to fix this disparity, as areas in the world like Canada and Australia have much healthier statistics than the United States. The goal is to strengthen the foundation of education, mostly the K-12 range.
When viewing this article from a networks perspective, we can pinpoint that the trends pointed out in this article are consistent with the Rich-Get Richer Model in chapter 18. As families get more and more “popular”, or in this case wealthier, the probability that they will have more links/connections goes up. Additionally, chapter 17 points out that if we improve the infrastructure of the “product”, or in this case the education system, we can have the tipping point be easier to get across. This can result in the educational system stabilizing at a higher point, as there would be an upward pressure that drives the population to this point. Although this article doesn’t frame this problem with this perspective, models can definitely be created to mathematically visualize and analyze this particular situation.