To be equitable is to be fair. In education, it is to give students the same opportunity to learn. In Chapter 9 of Solomon’s text, they are talking about how inequitable the gender equality is for fields such as math, science, and engineering. The chapter describes a great number of programs and incentives to close this gap, and all of the measures involve appealing to the social side of females. I think that to see the gap as a detriment is the wrong way to view things. Females are more social by nature, so I believe they pick careers which fulfill this need. If you look at the number of male to female nurses, for example, approximately 5.4% of RN’s are male, according to the web site http://www.allnursingschools.com. This is a far greater gap than the gender gap in technological fields. I believe that equity is giving individuals equal opportunity to learn a given profession, but you have to take into consideration that fact that males and females are just different. We should not expect them to be equal in all things.

But is equity possible? I think it is near impossible to be fair in education because of the vast differences that exist in schools. Students should not be judged on whether they all learned the same things, which is what NCLB seems to do. The premise behind NCLB is good, there does need to be a minimum competency exhibited by our students, our future citizens, however, there are many obstacles to overcome, and just throwing money at the problem will not fix it. There has to be a change in attitude before reform can begin. The idea of punishing districts that don’t perform up to the national standards does not make much sense to me. It is like punishing a student who has a learning disability instead of helping them. It is desirable for school systems to be more equitable, but again, great barriers exist to making this happen.