Education as the Great Equalizer: Myth or Reality?

Introduction

The idea of education as the "great equalizer" has been a long-held belief, particularly in societies striving for meritocracy and social mobility. Horace Mann, a 19th-century advocate for public education, popularized this notion, suggesting that education could level the playing field and mitigate disparities between individuals. This article delves into the complexities of this concept, examining the extent to which education truly serves as an equalizer, while also exploring the systemic challenges and disparities that persist within educational systems.

The Promise of Equal Opportunity

In theory, education offers a pathway for individuals to overcome disadvantages and achieve success regardless of their background. The focus on "equal learning opportunities" aims to provide all children with the same curriculum, pace, and methods, fostering a sense of fairness and meritocracy. The central idea behind Mann’s balance wheel metaphor is that equal opportunity to acquire a quality education is a prerequisite for equal opportunity to participate in our political, civic, and economic institutions-and that the welfare of a democratic society depends on broad participation in those institutions.

Education is often referred to as the great equalizer: It can open the door to jobs, resources, and skills that help a person not only survive, but thrive. Last year, our work to promote education for all reached over 676,000 children. We integrate our education programs into both our development and emergency work to give children living in extreme poverty more opportunities in life and supporting their overall well-being.

The Reality of Unequal Outcomes

Despite the promise of equal opportunity, the reality is that educational outcomes often reflect and reinforce existing inequalities. The notion that schools increase, rather than reduce, children’s differences in life chances appears correct when we consider that children who earn better grades go on to have greater life success. Several factors contribute to this disparity, starting well before children even enter the formal education system.

Disparities in Early Childhood

Before children even enter education, their life experiences differ substantially. Children’s family background (e.g., how educated their parents are or how much household income their family has at their disposal) is a powerful predictor of their school readiness-a combination of children’s school-entry skills, attention skills, and socioemotional skills. We know that preschool education helps better prepare children for school, but for some families the costs of preschool are simply too high to pay. The average cost of part-time preschool (25 hours) for children under the age of 2 years in 2024 is £8,194. In the United Kingdom, families do not gain access to any form of free childcare until children are two years old, when families receive 15 hours free, increasing to 30 hours after the age of three. This is reflected in the proportion of families who utilise preschool childcare when kids are 0 to 4 years old. As children’s language develops, they begin building the foundations for literacy, reading, and writing, which are key to doing well in class. But we know children arrive at school with very different language abilities: Some show signs of developmental language disorders, some struggle with reading because they are affected by dyslexia, and some have not been much exposed within their family homes to the language that is typical in school settings. That means that some children are better prepared than others for school.

High-quality preschool and other early education options provide children with social, emotional, and motivational skills that close school-readiness gaps. While quality prekindergarten learning environments are critical to the future well-being of individuals, these opportunities are inaccessible to the majority of American families. Private programs have high tuition rates, and the publicly funded programs do not reach as many people as they should. The public program Head Start, which is available to families from low-economic backgrounds, reaches only 41% of income-eligible households. In addition to access, quality education is also more difficult to find for low-income Americans. Lower-quality education reduces the impact of pre-K on a child’s development and later success. The quality of programming is critical but greatly varies depending on where you live.

The Enduring Impact of Family Background

Children from advantaged family backgrounds do better in exams when they start school and continue to do so as they go through the primary and secondary school years. The relationship between family background and school performance has remained stable for almost a century in Britain, with children from more advantaged family backgrounds consistently performing better. We must therefore ask ourselves whether the current education system, equal opportunities for all, is actually unfair from the very beginning. Creating equal learning opportunities for all students will not produce fair education systems if students differ in their abilities to utilise these opportunities.

Systemic Challenges in Public Education

As a whole, California’s public education system, which educates over 90% of all K-12 students statewide, faces enormous challenges. By most measures, it performs below average within the United States (which itself lags behind many other advanced economies around the world). From an equity standpoint, our schools do even worse, with most Latino and Black students not meeting grade-level standards. Financially, the system is under-resourced in certain important areas, and yet recent and significant funding increases have had relatively little impact on student outcomes, raising serious questions. Let’s try to untangle this story a bit to figure out what’s happening and how we might improve our education system.

According to the state’s data, across all grade levels at all public schools in the state’s K-12 system, just one half (51%) of our students meet or exceed the grade-level standards for language arts and even fewer (40%) meet or exceed those for math. Breaking the data down by race exposes vast disparities. While Asian Americans, in aggregate, are learning more than other groups, the data indicate that even so, nearly 1 out of every 4 Asian American students in our K-12 system is not on grade level for reading. This is true for over one-third of White students. For Black and Latino students, the figures are truly tragic: roughly two-thirds and one-half, respectively, are not on grade level for reading and other language skills. The disparities are even more pronounced for math: Just 1 in every 5 Black students is on grade level for math. For Latino students, the figure is 1 in every 4 students. Asian and White students in aggregate are doing better (3-in-4 and 1-in-2 are on grade level, respectively), but even here, huge numbers of students are not on grade level.

Like race, household income and learning are also closely correlated, but importantly, both race and income have independent correlations with learning. In other words, even isolating students who are economically disadvantaged and those who are not, clear racial disparities persist, implying that income alone does not explain disparate learning outcomes for Black and Latino students (below I will reference some of the barriers students face including a system that expects less of some students because of implicit bias).

According to the state’s own criteria, just 44% of students who exited our public school system last year were college or career ready. This is not good enough, especially for a state that boasts one of the world’s most skill- and knowledge-intensive economies and highest costs of living. Today, in contrast, our K-12 system graduates roughly 60% of students who are simply not prepared (and, for state institutions, not eligible) for college. That is hardly a choice. In fact, it is misleading. Students who advance from grade to grade and receive a high school diploma ought to have earned - and often incorrectly believe that they have earned - an education that has prepared them for college if they choose it.

Ultimately, the data tell us that most of our young people are not being prepared for the technology-enabled and globally-competitive world into which they will enter upon graduation. This is tragic for the millions of young Californians who will find it harder to achieve their full potential (including financial independence and psychological well-being) as they enter adulthood. It also poses a huge, long-term risk to our entire society. Education is not just important for individuals - it underpins societal health and stability as well.

Barriers to Education

Many children face barriers that impact their education, including: poverty (1 in 6 children in California), food insecurity (1 in 4 residents in Silicon Valley), domestic violence (1 in 15 children nationally are exposed to domestic violence), and homelessness (8% of the homeless population in our County is under 18 years of age). Roughly 35% of children in California do not live in two-parent homes, which is associated with many measures of child well-being. Finally, 19% of students in California public schools are English Language Learners. As a public school teacher in the Alum Rock Unified School District, I saw how these challenges manifest in students’ lives and affect the energy and focus they are able to bring into the classroom. These are not trivial barriers and, to be sure, we cannot expect schools to eliminate the various forms of adversity that students face outside of school.

COVID-19 and Exacerbated Inequities

The pandemic threatens to greatly exacerbate existing inequities in our public school system as learning continues for students whose parents have greater time, resources and know-how to supplement schools’ reduced services while less privileged students have diminished access to instructional time, curricula and feedback. As we saw in our analysis of the housing shortage and its impacts, vulnerable members of our community are most likely to suffer when systems - whether private marketplaces or public institutions - break down.

Towards a More Equitable Education System

While the ideal of education as the "great equalizer" may not be fully realized, there are steps that can be taken to create a more equitable system.

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Targeted Support and Resources

In the United Kingdom, the pupil premium reflects this idea: Schools receive additional funding to afford extra educational resources to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds overcome their disadvantages in education. Ofsted has reported that pupil premium has made a positive impact across many U.K. Some suggest that aiming for educational adequacy is what is most fair, whereby some inequality in opportunities is acceptable, and at-risk children should be provided with additional support and resources. In theory, this would allow all students to develop the basic competencies necessary to live rich, meaningful, and fulfilling lives.

Learning from High-Performing Schools

As a starting point, schools show wide variance in student learning outcomes for different student subpopulations, including those whom the overall system serves least well today. For example, according to Innovate Public Schools (a local nonprofit where my wife works), there are currently 49 public schools in the Bay Area that perform especially well for low-income Black and Latino students. In these “Top Schools,” 93% of low-income Black and Latino students are college/career ready (vs. 30% for Black and Latino students across the Bay Area). These schools are achieving college readiness numbers that are higher than those in Palo Alto and Cupertino for a student population that districts are largely failing in aggregate.

A Holistic Approach to Education

Education can only hope to be the great equalizer if the notion of education is holistic. Could a barrier to education be the assumption that people are born with the knowledge to meet these needs? People must be taught how to meet these needs. Until that is accomplished, reading, writing and arithmetic will not be fully understood and therefore not utilized to create equality. Typically, education for all is often motivated by money; a well-educated citizenry results in a strong economy. Is this market-driven impetus for education enough? Education uplifts people, expands their perspectives, and increases their tolerance of themselves and others. It also boosts their sense of safety and self-esteem, contributes to clarity in their decision-making abilities, infects them with lifelong curiosity, and a desire to learn and expand all aspects of themselves. Maybe this overall sense of contentment, not the economy, is the essential stimulus to motivate society to use education as the great equalizer?

Addressing Systemic Issues

Specific questions remain as we have made advancements in technology and other areas. Why has access to resources and higher quality curriculum not increased for all students? While there are several proven methods that institutions have used to improve student outcomes, every school has not executed them. New education initiatives seek to provide more finances for schools to allow more students to receive a quality education. The systemic issues have surfaced: access and opportunity for students and the teachers who serve them. The access and opportunity encompass a wide array of necessary support, from providing tangible resources to teacher training and SEL services for students [and teachers].

The Importance of Early Childhood Education

The years between birth and age five are a critical time for every child’s cognitive and social-emotional development. For children from underserved communities, programs such as Head Start help level the playing field and make sure every child has the chance to make a healthy start. During the Obama administration, we helped bring the number of states offering state-funded preschool up to 46.

The federal government should define standards and create a quality evaluation system that encourages effective learning environments, addresses teacher-student ratios, cultural diversity, and minimum training requirements for teachers. Policymakers would not have to start from scratch either. Leaders can look to D.C. To effectively implement a national early education policy, federal leaders should coordinate and expand their current programs and funding streams to create a more comprehensive early education system that meets the needs of all young students. The PDBG-5 should be expanded and improved upon to enable and incentivize state and local governments to build education programs that meet the national standards established by the federal government. State programs need the resources and guidelines to create effective and far-reaching programs that lead to strong learning outcomes. Expanding support of state programs does not mean that Head Start has to go away, either. Recent studies argue that Head Start is successful at improving cognitive skills and school-readiness for students who would otherwise be learning at home. The funding for federal and state pre-kindergarten programs should be attached to quality standards, including a comprehensive annual evaluation system, which would help programs ensure stronger socio-economic outcomes and mobility for our nation’s most disadvantaged students.

Education as a Foundation for Societal Well-being

Education is strongly linked to economic growth. “The relationship between…the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run [economic] rowth rate is extraordinarily strong,” the study’s authors conclude. Education also means healthier mothers and children. Examining 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers from the World Bank and International Center for Research on Women found that educated women tend to have fewer children and have them later in life. A 2017 report shows that the country’s maternal mortality rate had declined by more than 70% in the last 25 years, approximately the same amount of time that an amendment to compulsory schooling laws took place in 1993. Children also benefit from more educated mothers. Several reports have linked education to lowered stunting, one of the side effects of malnutrition.

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