This is a consistent and ongoing conversation, especially since 2020, this is a conversation that has changed the entire dynamics around education on a large scale and what it should look like in marginalized communities across the board.
According to the Aspen Institute BIPOC and lower-income students are less likely to receive four-year degrees; only 13% of students who enter community college will earn a degree within six years.
These alarming numbers constantly put these communities behind the eight ball when it comes to education and a chance at making a higher or even livable income.
In this post-pandemic society that we are now living in, education hasn’t only changed in terms of the curriculum it has also changed in terms of how it is being taught both digitally and physically.
Online school during the pandemic really incorporated technology into classrooms more than ever, this also exposed how marginalized communities very often don’t have the necessary access to the technology that is needed in many cases.
When you also factor in the extremely high cost of higher education this pushes many in these communities away from even attempting to get a higher education in fear of not being able to pay back the student loan debt.
The closure of schools set back these marginalized communities as parents had to figure out how to be teachers, for working parents this was extremely hard to do and a time in their lives that these students will never get back.
For a generation that is already isolated in a lot of ways due to high levels of digital consumption the pandemic only increased that.
Being only three years removed from that we still don’t know the true effects of what the isolation and lost years of education had on these students let alone society as a whole.
As communities continue to rebuild and reshape themselves after the pandemic and now into a recession, communities are trying to figure out what education will look like in the classroom and at home going forward.
What many of these under served communities want is support and transparency, not just from the schools but also from different organizations around the community. With there being a lack of transparency between the families and schools, the problem lies.
There are often resources available for these but it is not promoted in the forefront for students and families to get access to, when you factor this in with the lack of knowledge that these communities have about these educational resources it goes back to the racial inequity that still exists within the educational system.
While there is progress being made to help these communities out it is still a tough battle for these communities as we live in this new and ever-evolving technological society.
Author Credit: Markel Collins
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