Introduction
The United States is the world’s sole superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has a lot of attributes in the twenty-first century, including the most powerful military, the largest economy, and the third most populous country in the world (Sombart et al., 2017). The previous administrations ‘ strategies are chartered schools, test-based funding, and education capital. Still, it has failed to tackle the problems of inequality between white students and non-white students. Based on conflict and symbolic interaction theory, the future administration can implement several essential strategies to eliminate and mitigate disparities among the students. They include equalization of financial resources, change in curriculum, and deployment of highly qualified teachers.
Currently, the United States has the second-largest higher education system after China. There is a high influx of students from foreign countries who come for education, making it the top destination. Despite all the attributes that supremacy has eroded, the country faces so many challenges. The prospects of specific countries, including India and China, intend to surpass the US-based economic output by 2050. The economy’s production can be influenced directly by the education system and federal policies. Therefore, instructors’ education and the teaching approach adopted in their day-to-day activities are essential in defining the education system and existing national guidelines (Darling-Hammond, 2017). Several pathways into teaching have thrived inside and outside universities and colleges for most of the legal history of teachers’ education in the United States.
The education system is not efficient, creating gaps in academic achievement for different segments of the population, school completion rates, and learning opportunities. The past administrations have responded to provide alternative pathways into teaching, enduring problems of teacher education and facilitating alternatives ways to university hegemony over teachers. As much as they have strived hard to tackle the existing issues in the education center, these strategies have had less impact on the inequalities within the educational system and federal policies.
Objection
The Program Would Be Costly
Recruitment of more teachers and training them will require the states and the national government to channel substantial money into the education sector. The administration may face a massive budget deficit, thereby proposing a significant increase in business taxes. The state taxes affect decisions made by a business which directly impact the economic growth. Budgetary effects and incentives rely on the long-run impact of tax policies. Increased taxes will discourage enterprises from investing in those specific states. Usually, policymakers decrease taxes on businesses to make them do better. Investing much in education will require more money, and policymakers will change the tax policies to fund the education sector. Consequently, a harsh business environment will negatively impact business expansion, job creation, and production efficiency.
Investing too much taxpayer money in education will increase tax cuts, which can slow long-run economic growth. When there is a budget deficit, the administrations will be compelled to borrow. They can be channeled to private investment, and foreign investors can borrow. The implications of government borrowing will be reducing the amount of future income from that investment, crowding out private investment, and reducing the future productive capacity relative to what it could have been.
The Current Chartered School Can Tackle the Issues
Charter schools are publicly funded schools that have more autonomy than public school districts in their staffing decision and development of curricula. They have substantially increased, thereby affecting the enrollment pattern of private and public schools in the United States. Creating new professional opportunities for educators, innovative teaching procedures, and encouraging the latest teaching methods are the critical objectives of charter schools. Many parents prefer taking their children to these schools due to the student-to-teacher ratio and small classroom size (Walters, 2018). They are designed to mitigate the likelihood of students dropping out of school and make students excel. Additionally, low-income families have enrolled their children in these schools, helping society financially. These institutions operate under the influence of community leaders and parents, making them directly responsible for their success or failure. The policies in these schools galvanize teachers to engage in innovative teaching methods and deploy them.
Education Capital Is Relevant to the Society
Education facilitates economic growth and development if it informs, stimulates, and liberates an individual. The human capital theory assures that formal education is essential in enhancing the productive capacity of a society. The human capital theory has been applied to the education system to facilitate human development in the general community. The increased diversification of the labor force directly affects productivity; therefore, the ability to increase productivity existing labor in several ways is the contribution of education to economic growth and development.
Education capital’s benefits include the distribution of financial help, education burden, and the geographical and social distribution of educational opportunities. There are indirect economic returns based on external benefits affecting other people in the community (Sodirjonov, 2020). Education expenditure comprises a form of investment attributed to the significance of the role of education in the economy of the nation. Through the education capital, the employment chance in the labor market is high. Educated individuals have opportunities for job mobility earning a significant income. There certainly is enhanced money-making for an individual worker, and there is an excellent output for the society. Educational capital is a strategy that can act as a leveling mechanism to enhance equal opportunities and social justice. It plays a significant role in determining an individual’s achievement in school.
Supporting Counterargument Facts
Test-based Funding
Standardized tests required all the students to sit for a standard examination to measure their achievement and academic aptitude. They are mandatory in primary and secondary schools in the United States, and they are used to scrutinize the eligibility for funding by federal education. Assess students’ current educational development and college admission heavily deploy the ACT and SAT standardized tests. On the other hand, test-based funding galvanizes schools to achieve meaningful outcomes such as school funding and graduation. Since the students take the same test and evaluation, funding the best-performing school due to their hard work and commitment to education is fair. Test-based funding galvanizes the performing schools to be consistent in producing elite results.
The incentives are given to the best-performing school with the essential learning resources. Students, teachers, and school leaders respond to a financial incentive to improve students’ performance (Han & Sohn, 2020). The schools are infused with additional state revenues, and the achievement level of students is based on a single standardized test. A state can implement legislation for giving more funds to top-performing although there can be a substantial inequality between poor and wealthy learning institutions. The state’s school finance system creates a culture of winners and losers; it is punitive for the non-performing schools.
Tax Incentives
There is less money channeled out towards another sector of the economy, such as the education sector. The tendency to get tax incentives is high, affecting both supply and demand factors. If the government reduces marginal taxes on salaries and wages, people can be galvanized to work more. Many low-skilled workers can join the labor force due to the expansion of the earned income tax credit. Many businesses will opt to invest domestically rather than abroad following the reduced marginal rates on business income. The administration can impose lower marginal taxes on the returns to assets such as capital gains, dividends, and interest, which may facilitate saving. Firms can conduct intensive research on new ideas to boost the fast growth of the economy (Mukherjee et al., 2017). Contrary, the current tax system has impacted the deployment of investment capital; it favors housing over other investment types.
Why the Position Is the Best
Equalization of Finance Resources
Attention to inequalities at all levels, including districts, states, classrooms, and courses, is necessary to tackle the progression in equalizing resources to students. Minority and low-income students are usually at risk from the significant shortcomings of the schools they attend following the consequences of the systematic inequalities. Conflict theory results from the competition for limited resources in the institutions deprived of equitable resources (Kendall, 2015). A system that poorly educates the affected students will exacerbate their situation even if special programs such as bilingual education and compensatory education will never effectively improve their poor results in education.
Most of their problems result from policies formed by the districts and state, deploy incompetent staff, impede the adoption of more promising teaching strategies and curricula, and fund the schools inadequately. To achieve equity, the intent is to create interventions that improve core schooling practices and refrain from implementing regulations and additional programs on a compromised foundation. Therefore, it is necessary to change the status quo significantly before scraping educational programs, developing new rules and procedures, and separating budgets. There should be an adequate and equitable school finance system for all the students. Tools benchmark is a suitable approach to track students’ needs and growth, which the state should fund. It paves the way for more personalized and data-driven models of instruction the get better education outcomes for all students.
Change in Curriculum
The existing curriculum offered to non-white students is insufficient to meet the new standards being proposed and implemented by the national associations and states; they are outdated for the contemporary demand of modern life. Implementing new measures will enhance extensive research and writing, new technologies, independent analysis, and problem-solving techniques, and innovative strategies’ adoption in new situations. The administration will facilitate significant changes in resources and curriculum to ensure that these activities are done consistently in the classrooms of non-white students. The national welfare will substantially benefit the efforts to create a curriculum that facilitates critical thinking for all students. The adequate teachers who are trained to teach such an advanced curriculum are necessary to achieve the intent of the new curriculum to take the challenging task of teaching many kinds of students with learning styles, aptitudes, interests, and diverse needs in a combined setting of a classroom.
Students can be racially segregated based on color; in another case, the income of students plays a significant role in segregating the rich and the poor students. Therefore, economic and racial segregation has created a rift between white and non-white students as well as rich and poor students (Scott, 2012). Introducing segregation as a current reality in the curriculum is essential. The curriculum should discuss the root of segregation and why it exists in schools. A significant topic introduces the potential remedies to tackle school segregation and highlights the repercussions of segregated schools to society and the students (PSB, 2014). Therefore, the symbolic theory has been used to justify that change of curriculum results from the current situation of children segregation in schools.
Deployment of Highly Qualified Teachers
Policies that ensure mastery of this knowledge by all teachers permitted to practice and professionalize teaching by enhancing the teaching knowledge base should be implemented. Prospect teachers should know how changes in the classroom and school practice can support their achievement and growth, how various curricular and instructional strategies can address their needs, and how children learn and develop. Based on the approach, no one is supposed to practice teaching if they have not been approved and have the professionalization of the occupation. The law will eradicate the practice of the untrained entrants to practices on the poorly protected students. It is essential to improve the quality of educational services to all students by increasing the overall knowledge base for the occupation, especially those who require high-quality teaching the most.
The current incentive programs encourage the hiring of inexperienced teachers, uncertified instructors, and a disproportionate number of substitute educators. Policy amendment will allow students to benefit from initiatives that uphold the standards of practices for all teachers. It will provide financial aid for highly qualified prospective teachers who will deploy their services in poor rural areas and central cities and quality preparations programs. The shortage of trained teachers can be overcome through changing policies and long-standing incentives in education, thereby providing equity in the distribution of teacher quality. Good teachers in schools serving minority and low-income students will be enhanced by discouraging lower salaries and poor working conditions. Through symbolic theory, the poor school results are attributed to the deployment of unqualified teachers.
Conclusion
Highly qualified teachers, curriculum changes, and the equalization of financial resources are among the strategies that are likely to reduce the existence of inequality among white and non-white students. The current intervention plan that includes the introduction of chartered schools, test-based funding, and education capital has failed trebly. Strategies to equalize resource allocation will promote the uniform distribution of essential resources among all the students. Furthermore, introducing particular topics in the school curricula will enhance learners’ problem-solving skills, critical thinking proficiency, and innovativeness and help them solve the pre-existing social issues, including segregation, within their learning institutions. Ultimately, deploying highly qualified teachers will ensure high professionalism levels among educators and promote the use of essential skills to educate the students. Implementing the proposed strategies in the education sector will also enhance the economy of the United States and improve its global ranking with regard to education.
References
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