Minority and Poor Students Become Majority in the South

by Mike Smith · 2010-01-07 07:59:00 UTC
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More than half students in the South are members of a minority, a milestone reached for the first time last year says a new report by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF). This is likely to happen nationwide by 2020. Worrying though is that more than half of students from the South are from low-income families, and the number of students receiving free or cut-price lunches is on the rise in every state, reports the New York Times.

If the South doesn't step up, the long-term consequences could be terrible; the states are desperate to create a workforce that can help their economies develop. The same is true nationwide, and the implications of a majority number of students coming from impoverished background makes it even more essential to improve schools (and teachers). Sadly, lawmakers don't appreciate that doing things like legalizing undocumented would help their economy and give a huge boost to local economies.

The SEF explain that the way public education is financed has to change in order to ensure fair opportunity for all — those in most need don't get enough money. The SEF conclude by saying "No challenge is now more important than helping the South’s new, diverse majority of public school students realize the full measure of their potential for themselves and the rest of the region." We're not just letting students down by failing them, but dragging the South and the nation down with every high-school student we allow to drop-out, and every child we fail.

Photo credit: Bloomsberries

Mike Smith is associate editor at Change.org.
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