Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education: Causes of Inequality

In Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education, noted education expert Jose Martinez’s examines current aspects of inequality in American education, examining the complex nexus of funding, diversity, and the increasingly contentious role of standardized testing. A readable narrative format assesses the extensive documentation, which demonstrates that inequality is becoming entrenched throughout the education system, in no small measure due to biases in standardized testing systems. Students from kindergarten through university face the arising challenges while their environments are becoming more diverse. Funding levels in education are also posited as causes of inequality. This complements the view that standardized testing at all levels of education mirrors and exacerbates entrenched economic inequality. Education funding and standardized testing at all levels have thus become basic mechanisms that purposefully reproduce and maintain a two-tiered society. The solutions are not difficult to discern, as other societies can attest, but Martinez’s thought-provoking new book moves toward engaging them.