Cogs of inequity: How structural inequities impeded school efforts to support students and families at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Equality of opportunity is the aspiration of a just society, but the reality is that inequities remain entrenched in many aspects of America today. Structural inequities are deeply rooted conditions that are codified into the organization of social systems and produce disadvantages to some groups based on their intrinsic qualities or capabilities (Noguera & Alicia, 2020). The experience of schools in their transition to online learning in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020 illuminated many of the structural inequities that plague the education system. In this paper, we use the literature on structural inequities to identify and analyze seven inequities that schools faced during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.