Just as the national measurement of poverty is standardized and shows no regard to local circumstance, so too is public education in the US. Because education is a facet of society dependent on administrative legislation, the institution of education itself in the US is intrinsically weakened by the absence of community needs. The standardized institution of education, when implemented on a communal level, is rendered incompatible with that community’s citizenry andall of its encompassing social management systems (Raffel 146).  I believe that public education should be specifically designed to engage the public it means to serve so that it may likened to a weapon for society instead of a weapon against society.

 Due to the fact that I lay claim to know of no actual solution in curing social poverty, I am prompted to offer
what I deem the necessary institution to consider most, when it comes to
narrowing down a community’s conceptualization of poverty. I believe that
education is the most important tool that we have
when it comes to addressing and tackling the issues we face within society.
Public education may be viewed as a key component to society and may be answer in regards to the
mitigation of poverty, due to the fact that it may be likened to that of an
independent variable in that, it too, like poverty, transcends both time and
place. Speaking in sociological terms alone, the importance of socioeconomic
status is directly connected to education. In seeing education as a key
component of social life in all societies of humanity, it becomes an immediate
confidant to poverty in ways either beneficial or harmful when it comes to
understanding the human phenomena of poverty.

The issue is that poverty in America is dependent on the notion of relativity. Financial
affluence in is circumstantial, and subject to change for any American at any
given time. I do not claim to know of an alternative method for going about
properly measuring the population, but I do make the claim that instead of
standardizing poverty measurements on a fixed threshold of numbers...there
should instead be an individualized account of community in the calculation. If
the population of impoverished peoples in a community is independently measured
according to its own circumstances, cultural norms, stigmas, historical
background and statistics, then this allows the concept of comparative
measurement to reveal a more realistic gauge of poverty populations. To be more
specific, poverty within communities should be measured based on their own
assessment of what exactly determines its poverty. And as I mentioned before, I
believe that in regards to Birmingham, Alabama...history is the key determinant
that perpetuates poverty, but also, provides the answer in alleviating its
profound impact on this city. This community driven evaluation of poverty will
furnish a more abstract, yet concrete measurement, by allowing us, as a nation
to analyze what constitutes poverty on a regional level and thus draw on the
comparative correlations between them.  Focusing primarily on the different locales of
the United States is key when it comes to proper utilization of the variations
of the educational systems within the nation. Due to the fact that poverty
itself has transcended both time and place within the country, yet has been
seen to shift according to demographic fluctuations and social circumstances,
certain strategies can therefore be constructed to cater to these specifications
(Carr). Recognizing the local circumstances within the regions of the country
are key when it comes to properly assessing and resolving the issues involving
poverty and proposing strategies to mitigate the phenomenon. These vital
geographical contexts within American society regarding poverty are crucial to
poverty reduction strategies, and it is this context in which poverty should be
understood.

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