Delving into decades prior, something rather interesting that one can find is that while the black-white educational achievement gap has been slowly decreasing, educational inequality for children from poor families continues to grow.  In the early 1950s through the 1960s the disparity between races was apparent while income inequality remained shockingly low.  This pattern began to reverse itself as the decades went on, although presently there is a great connection with residential segregation and wealth inequality.  Nowadays, the income achievement gap is considerable which helps to secure the unequal cycle of the rich remaining rich and the poor remaining stuck. There is no denying that the wealth gap has a massive impact on the educational achievement gap.

Where does this large gap between student achievement and income class come from?  Many factors play into this pattern.  Firstly, uneducated parents can play a large part in the educational disparity.  Educated parents will know what to look for in a school, and in its teachers and programs.  They will help to foster their child’s educational growth by setting a good example in regards to their language usage, homework help, and by reading to their children.  This unfortunately does not always happen in less affluent households.  Moreover, many lower-income families lack a two-parent home.  Financial hardship is the number one cause of divorce, and students in one parent homes can suffer tremendously in school.  Often, single parents have less time to partake in educational activities with their child.  Incarceration is another method of separating parents and create a single-parent home.  It tends to have a massive consequence on familial income by removing a person in the family as a wage-earner.  In fact, a study shows that the probability for a student with an incarcerated to graduate high school is fifty percent lower.  Lastly, the lowered income itself plays a strong role in the lives of many students.  Less affluent families cannot afford to move into strong school districts, or provide for certain educational opportunities that wealthier families take for granted.

The Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, recognizes the disproportionalities in the achievement gap, and has sought to help mend it.  During his term, he has made improvements such as raising the graduation rate by more than twenty percentage points, improving student-achievement rates, and lessening the student proficiency gap on state tests.  De Blasio’s universal full-day pre-k is another perfect example of trying to diminish the achievement gap between the rich and the poor.  By providing a full day of schooling to three-year-olds of all economic backgrounds, the children are not only getting access to better education, but their parents also gain more time to work without the need for childcare. Moreover, contrary to former Mayor Bloomberg’s plan of shutting down failing schools, de Blasio has created two turnaround programs.  The Community Schools Initiative provides services to the struggling institutions to aid educational achievement, and the School Renewal Program provides funding for programs such as summer school, and adds an extra hour to a school day.  Overall, although Mayor de Blasio has helped to ameliorate some of the achievement-gaps there is still much that he can improve on.  The injustice in the public-school system is impossible to deny between the different economic classes, and there must be more done to help bridge the gap.