Social mobility is an important feature of our society, because the “American Dream” is the cornerstone of our national ethos. However, people at the bottom are finding it increasingly difficult to move up the ladder, because doing so requires an investment of time, effort and resources of which they don’t have. Education has been celebrated as the pathway to become successful and move forward, because it is available to everyone regardless of who they are. Yet, education may still not be a viable way of moving up, because of the poor quality of schools in low-income neighborhoods. Consequently, many argue that in order to tackle educational inequality we must address family SES (socioeconomic status), because it’s the most significant factor in educational attainment. However, I posit that the more effective approach to solving this issue is to pursue policies directed towards to …show more content…
However, it must be noted that it would be rather difficult to develop policies that monumentally alter the socioeconomic status of disadvantaged students. As I’ve aforementioned, the goal is not only to identify causes of educational inequality but to also develop policies that will resolve this issue. Furthermore, there are certain caveats that be taken into consideration with respect to the Logan & Burdick-Will study. One may simply conclude from this study that SES is the determining factor of educational attainment. However, this one finding shouldn’t be the be all end all of discussion, because more and more studies are showing that other factors come into play like school choice. In addition, minority students tend to have very little choice with their education, so the sample sizes and datasets of minority students enrolled in charter schools, for example, tend to be relatively small. Therefore, we can’t assume that these findings are unbiased and significant without consulting other