Saved by the Bell: Socioeconomics and the American School System

Professor Terry Beck links a jamboard into our class’s zoom chat. He offers his students prompts and asks us to drop a virtual sticky note on a plane, each corner labeled “strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree”. Each prompt discusses the involvement of socioeconomics on student performance. Slowly, colorful stickies populate the page, scattered across the axes. We spend the class discussing our interpretations on the American school system, standardized testing, and socioeconomics. In preparation for class, we read Richard Rothstein’s article “Why Children from Lower Socioeconomic Classes, on Average, have Lower Academic Achievement than Middle-Class Children”. Frequently, academic achievement Continue reading Saved by the Bell: Socioeconomics and the American School System