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The Achievement Gap

Submitted by tokiokobayas on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 19:58

    It’s generally agreed that in order to close the achievement gap, we need to give opportunities to those who are poor, and are living in environments that pose as a threat to their child’s education. For context, the achievement gap is the gap in success in school between high-income and low-income students. In my personal opinion, the reallocation of government spending (specifically demilitarization) to areas with poor education systems, would greatly increase educational opportunities, the quality of education, and create jobs for more teachers. During 2015 alone, the U.S spent roughly 600 billion dollars in military spendings. If we were to cut military spending in half, that would give education systems 300 billion more dollars to use, and still leave the military with 300 billion spending dollars. The military also tends to “max out” on the budget in order to maintain the budget. For example, the military has lots of extra ‘disposable’ equipment that is bought in order to continually perpetuate this idea that the military “needs this amount of money” in order to continue functioning. The actual budget used by the military is barely ever looked at specifically, and when they are, it’s very apparent that the spendings are not being used efficiently. By allocating the taxpayers’ money elsewhere, we can generally increase the quality of education, and the achievement gap will eventually shrink due to better education systems.

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