Diversity is not Equal Opportunity

Writer: Sanvi Korsapathy

My school, an early college, recently implemented a new system for accepting new students: The lottery. Eighth graders anguish over writing essays, keeping their grades up, doing well on “The Test ™,” before a computer ultimately seals their fate.

My school system’s superintendent is a strong advocate for diversity in education. What she means is equal opportunity, but even then her goals don’t fit the definition.

Equal opportunity is giving all people a fair chance to excel, be it in the workplace or a public school. When school systems establish programs promoting equal opportunity, more often than not, schools strive to fill quotas, without working through the issue. Quotas, especially at higher levels, don’t benefit anyone. Establishing quotas in magnet high schools are problematic for all students. Teachers have to spend more time helping the students who are struggling, and other students leave feeling unchallenged, defeating the point of having schools with advanced programs. Trying to fill a race requirement forces schools to accept students who may not perform at the right level. It’s not that students can’t perform at this level. Higher-level schools don’t have the resources they need to raise all students accepted through a lottery-based program to the same standard.

Lotteries like this work better at a young age when students are at the same level. Instead of wasting resources trying to fix a problem at a late stage, school systems should focus on attacking it at the root. Give all kids access to well-funded schools. Moreover, that includes transportation. Charter schools try to provide this type of equal opportunity for younger ages through a lottery system. However, when you have one car and your nearest charter school is forty minutes away, there isn’t enough time to drop your kid off before going to work, so currently, these programs don’t have much effect on solving the issue.

This issue extends further than race. The kids in the nice neighborhood – where they get king-sized candy bars at every house on the street for Halloween – attend a well funded public school, and in turn, receive a better education. Meanwhile, the kids in the neighborhood just one school zone over – where questionable things live inside the house next door – attend a poorly funded public school, one where the teachers have to focus more on kids running off to the nearest crack house than parabolas and comma splices. Parents who can’t even afford to hold a birthday party for their kids, let alone live in half-million dollar houses, are forced to send their children to a lousy school with lousy teachers with lousy curricula.

Schools can try to counteract the lack of government funding by establishing magnet programs within public schools to attract sponsors. Private companies send money to schools that create future engineers: not to schools where kids would rather huff than learn about Pythagoras and his theorems. Public schools with magnet programs embedded can use the extra funds to improve the overall quality of the school while letting the district kids enroll in higher level classes when they are ready.

Having magnet schools within public schools and lottery-based charter schools at an early age, especially elementary school, helps more than focusing solely on increasing diversity later on, when not every student is at the same level. The issue isn’t that there are only 6 African-American students in my class, or that there are only 1 or 2 Hispanic students in each grade. The problem is that not everyone has a chance to go to the “best school,” or even a “good school.”

It all comes down to what diversity is and what equal opportunity is.

Diversity is trying to have 20% White students, 20% Asian students, 20% African-American students, 20% Native American students, 20% Hispanic students. Diversity is eating fruits, vegetables, and protein at every meal. Diversity is making sure you have one of every color in your kid’s crayon box. Diversity makes education into a color by numbers game.

A quick google search will tell you everything you’d need to approach this issue appropriately.

Variety isn’t why I go to school.

Race isn’t decoration.