School Funding, Education and Life Chances

After our class discussion today about life chances of an infant and after reading Weininger and Lareau follow up piece on Unequal Childhoods and w I was reminded of the Orpah Winfrey Show that did a trading schools segment in which high school juniors form two high schools in the Chicagoland Area switched schools for a day. One school, in the suburb of Naperville, my hometown, was presented and another in inner-city Chicago. As you can imagine, due to disparities in school funding the schools were starkly dissimilar. The suburban school was able to provide above and beyond for their students due to over the top funding parents and community leaders were able to donate, the school in the inner city lacked basic necessities such as enough books and functioning computers in their computer lab. I could not find the exact youtube video but I found one similar. It gets the same point across.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xdfVAPvv9A&feature=related