Higher education is not the cure-all of closing gaps. But it can be a vehicle to break those gaps.
Historically, it has not been. Equal gap between students based on their race, ethnicity, and income persists and becomes at least as hard to overcome.
[UNCLEAR — several introductory sentences]
For Black students, simply accessing higher education remains difficult, particularly at four-year colleges. [UNCLEAR]
[UNCLEAR — transition paragraph(s)]
A racial “opportunity gap” can be found when comparing any economic [UNCLEAR] American students with their White or [UNCLEAR] peers. [UNCLEAR] says [Sherrie Williams], an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Many of those gaps are worse for women, she said.
“And before a Black child is even born, the odds are stacked against them”
For example, [UNCLEAR — child poverty / residential inequality data for Black and Latino children].
Because of this structure, Black students are [UNCLEAR — description of under-resourced schools].
[UNCLEAR — section on mass incarceration, criminal records, and impact on Black families]
[UNCLEAR — section on health disparities and academic outcomes]
[UNCLEAR — research recommendations section]
Research has shown that low-income students of Black youth receive more different experiences than their white and more affluent [UNCLEAR] by kindergarten.
[UNCLEAR — multiple paragraphs]
“I think of children’s educational outcomes and students’ higher education outcomes as symptoms of the conditions in which they are born and raised. [UNCLEAR] so tied into what we call ‘poverty’ today. We should be promoting access to universal pre-K, and direct [UNCLEAR] as interventions to improve children’s [UNCLEAR] rather than [UNCLEAR].”
[UNCLEAR — closing paragraphs]
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