That concentration of poverty brings schools disadvantages that mixed-income schools often lack: health issues, mobile populations, entrenched violence and teachers who come from the least selective training programs.
Ultimately, such a policy works to the school's disadvantage, creating a situation in which students are afraid to complain about teachers who are incompetent or who abuse their power, while teachers who might be helped to improve are not brought to the attention of the administration.
They sought after social responsibility, with awareness of societal inequalities including: social divisions (they desired acceptance in the new school); social disadvantage (the sick, those with disability or education deprivation); and discriminative regimes (fearing exams or denial of admission/progression).
McCarthy said the data was at odds with Gove's claim that free schools targeted disadvantage.
And unlike in sports, where physical size often plays an undeniable, difficult-to-circumvent role in your eventual success, in school a physical disadvantage can turn into an academic advantage: children may learn to compete where they can succeed, where their persistence and attention can accomplish what their physical size may not.
Children begin school at a disadvantage and then never quite catch up, with lower achievement at the start of school shaping their expectations in the years ahead.
It's common sense that students who start school at a disadvantage need additional resources to access equal opportunity.
Young children in preK are put into red, yellow and green categories of reading success as early as age 4. The newest label comes from the word gap argument which is supposed to alert everyone to the idea that young children from poor families begin school at a disadvantage because by the time are 3 years old they have heard thirty million fewer words.
This means that almost nine in every ten children are enrolling in primary school at a disadvantage.
Males seemed to be disadvantaged at around half of all medical schools; ethnic minorities were disadvantaged at certain schools, significant socio-economic disadvantage was evident at two medical schools and those applying to nearby medical schools seemed to do better than those who lived outside the area [ 11].
