I've asked my fellow alf-ers to write up a paragraph or so about what type of project they'd like to develop so we can have something to continue working on after our time together is officially over. Here's my idea, and it's guiding what I'm trying to do on this blog.
I'm very concerned about inequity in society and particularly the structural factors that, I believe, cause inequities to persist. Uneven educational opportunities are among the most important of these factors, but there's much, much more, though I have a hunch that they all tie into education at some point. While we trumpted America as the land of equal opportunity, I believe this is still an aspiration not a reality.
The key word in that paragraph though is "hunch." I have no real way of knowing if what I believe is the case is actually the case because I lack the data and analytical tools to determine (1) if inequities actually exist and to what degree and (2) if inequity does exist, what factors determine it. I'm not even sure, in the greater Houston area what specific consequences of inequity are. I'd really like to know. I think we need to know these things before specific, effective, policy proposals can be made and implemented.
Do we really know what factors truly drive inequity in educational opportunities in our area (the local picture, not the global) and what those consequences are? I don't think we do. I'm not even sure we have a full idea of what those factors are. Is it the decentralized political environment? Is it poverty and crime rates? Infrastructure? Individual initiative? Perhaps we -- the majority anyway -- don't really care about equal educational opportunities.
What I would like to do with this blog is collect thought abouts these matters and develop it into a resource for gathering information that allows for the exploration of these questions.
That's my two cents anyway. I don't know if this is helpful at all.
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