Poverty and Education.

            Poverty and education are very much connected and not for the reasons that many people suspect. In poorer areas you may tend to see more broken homes and single mothers working numerous jobs to support their families. Many people tend to think that this can be a cause as to why students suffer in school. There are many stereotypes that exist as to why children do not succeed in poorer areas. Excuses range from there are not two parents to support the children or the parents are absent from the home and don’t care how their child does in school or even that poverty breeds uneducated people. All of these may be true but I do not necessarily believe that is the case.

            Arizona tends to have the lowest per pupil spending per year. This money is added to federal funds and funds collected through property taxes. The most important of the funding in our examination is the property tax. If you live in an impoverished neighborhood the amount collected in property taxes is going to be lower than a middle to upper middle class neighborhood. To help explain this we can have district X and district Y both are in the State of Arizona and both receive the standard amount Arizona pays per pupil of $5000. They have the same number of students and receive the same amount of federal dollars. District X is in an older area with home values averaging $50,000 per single family home while district Y has home values averaging $200,000. They both collect 5% of the value of the home per year to help pay for the school district. That means that for every home in district X $2,500 is collected in taxes while $10,000 is collected for every home in district Y. These examples show how a poor area can collect less in revenue for their educational system. Property taxes are an important revenue generator for most school districts. When areas become rundown education suffers because of the decrease in home values.

            Solutions to this problem are not necessarily in government. More money does not always mean better schools. Allowing students the option to take part in private schooling would really measure the lengths of parental interest in their students. Many people have talked about a voucher system that would allow parents to take the amount spent per student and invest that into tuition prices at a private school. This would allow students in an impoverished neighborhood to attend a private school that has a more credible curriculum. The down side to this program is if you live in an impoverished area you might not have access to a highly ranked private school that is across town. This system has its flaws but it helps remove students from failing public schools. 

My search for a home. Assignment Jan. 17, 2012

Hello again and thank you for reading another one of my exciting blogs! Last week I mentioned that I was in the process of finding myself a home and I am happy to say, my search has ended.  For the sake of the classroom assignment I will take the perspective of a childless couple, which is in fact, what my true perspective is. When searching for a home one of my first priorities was location. I wanted to be downtown/central and able to ride my bike to class and areas of my interest. My partner and I wanted to be in a place that was generally safe and had a neighborhood with good mix of people. The area where we found our home is just north of the Phoenix Country Club so it provides for a secure area as well as easy access to school and freeways to get to work. 

When looking for a home in the downtown area we did not want to be in condo like home or an apartment home. We wanted to be able to have a yard, even if small, for our dog. We could of afforded something in the suburbs of the valley that may have been bigger, but we wanted to be in the center. We wanted to get the most for our money and did. With no children and no real concerns, location and price was the only real choosing factors.

Using the models discussed in class, we wanted a home in the Central Business District (CBD).  The CBD, being part of the Concentric Zone Model, is the core of the model. The Concentric Zone Model is a spherical representation of the different levels of land and social structures, which is illustrated in layers. When looking for a home I did notice the bid rent theory. As we looked for a home further away from the core, they were less expensive than those closer to the core. A home in the CBD area can be sought after for many reasons, one being convenience. In a CBD area there isn’t much land left to develop so these areas tend to be higher in price and denser. However, staying true to the Concentric Zone Model there was those low-income home areas that are near the city center. Those low-income areas however have their character and have taken new forms through gentrification.

When looking for a home we looked at a few homes that were in areas of gentrification. In the Coronado and Los Olivos areas of phoenix, a lot of the homes in this area were homes that are very old and being remodeled and cleaned up. They were bought for cheap, turned around and sold for a higher price. Some people find gentrification a form of displacing low-income families. Although this may be a valid point, it also helps the area draw in middle-income families who have more disposable income which lead to more business in the area. More business in the area means more cash flow for public funding. Nice areas of downtown will also draw more tourism. Gentrification may be more of a pro than a con. In our text “Toward a Theory of Gentrification” it shows graphs and tables summarizing data of people in cities returning from the suburbs to the city. The gentrification of cities can draw in and retain families.  Again, thank you for reading my blog and I hope to see you all in class. 

About Me

Hello fellow classmates,

My name is Luis Martinez but I go by Louie, and this is my first blog EVER! I am pursuing my bachelors in biological science as well as a minor is sustainability. With this degree I plan on applying to medical school and pursuing a career as a orthopedic surgeon!

A little about myself; I am 25 and a junior here at ASU. I am a Arizona native, I was born in Tucson and lived there for most of my life. I moved here from Tucson in may of 2011 when I transferred to ASU. I work in a emergency room in Scottsdale as an EMT/ER Tech. I have worked in hospitals for 4 years now. Initially I was planning on attending nursing school but realized I wanted to do more.

Jan. 10 2012 blog
I decided to take this class because it satisfied my major and I enjoy urban areas of cities, from architecture to the activities they offer. Everything about urban areas of cities I enjoy. I am currently looking for a home in the downtown central area because I want to be in the heart of it all. I am extremely interested in the gentrification of urban areas that may have been overlooked because of the appearance or it's crime rate. From first lecture I appreciated the diversity of everyone's opinions on different policy subjects. One thing that resonated for me in lecture was a city hollowing out. In my opinion that could be one of the worst things that could happen. An urban area of the city is where it began. There is history in the buildings, homes and people who still live in those areas. When reading "Urban Policy Reconsidered", the subject of metropolitan revitalization came up and how urban policies can be developed to help keep people it the city. An example was education, the attraction of good schools attract individuals to the suburbs, but if urban public schooling was comparable or better that would keep the urban areas populated. As I said before, home development is another way of attracting people to urban areas. Not new developments, but the gentrification of those areas can increase the retention of residents. Policies can be developed to help in those goals.