Image credit: Ted S. Warren/AP Photo

Even before Horace Mann, the influential 19^th century American educator, referred to the United States’ education system as “the great equalizer,” Americans have been fond of thinking of their schools as being just that: institutions where people from every type of background are given the skills and resources necessary to achieve success — no matter where they grew up or who their parents were.

Unfortunately, over the last half of the 20^th century, American schools continued to fall short of this lofty and admirable goal. While the achievement gap between black and white students that had been created by school segregation was decreasing, the gap between poor and affluent students only grew larger. At the same time, the gap between the incomes of the poorest and richest Americans increased as well, to the point where income inequality in the United States in the early 21^st century is comparable to the rate of income inequality 100 years earlier, before trust-busting and the progressive income tax.

These two income “gaps” are connected by the simple fact that the average worker now needs more education than ever in order to transcend their parent’s income bracket. If children from low income households cannot keep up with their higher income counterparts academically, they will in turn be unable to keep up with them in terms of income. Many policymakers fear that over time this will lead to increasingly entrenched income inequality in the United States.

It is for this long-term reason — and not just the obvious short-term incentives for raising the test scores of low income students — that policymakers are focusing on closing the income achievement gap. However, there is considerable disagreement on how to achieve this goal. Conservatives tend to recommend expanding school choice for families and emphasize the potential of charter schools to improve the academic standings of disadvantaged students. More liberal voices, like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, have focused on trying to expand academic opportunities for young poor children within the existing public school system. For example, universal pre-kindergarten has been proposed as a possible antidote to the persistence of the income achievement gap.

Unfortunately, it is not immediately clear that any of these policy options on their own would be enough to completely solve the income achievement gap and prevent America’s income inequality from worsening. The research that seemingly proves the efficacy of early childhood education is hardly universally accepted, and charter schools have produced mixed results.

While few would advocate abandoning these reforms entirely, whether or not they are enough on their own to combat inequality in education remains to be seen. A more preferable long-term solution would be to see an increased focus on the high concentration of poverty in urban neighborhoods, which has been linked to lower academic performance for poor students. Addressing community issues like violence, hunger, and the health problems that disproportionately effect poor children could do more and cost less in the long run than continuing to put money into programs that fail to address the true causes of the income achievement gap.