Evolving Technology and Inequality, The Modern Day Circumstances of Students in Chicago

Disproportionate Academic Opportunity in Chicago

With 316,224 students and 630 different schools in its school district, Chicago Public Schools District (CPS) is the 4th largest School District in the United States. While CPS receives 8.6 billion dollars of funding a year, all these funds are not equally allocated (Chicago Public Schools, 2023). In May 2013 CPS decided to "close 49 elementary schools and one high school program located in an elementary school, the largest mass school closure to date. To accommodate the nearly 12,000 displaced students" (University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, 2018, p. 3). This decision was made with the idea of "cost savings", however, these closures "disproportionately affected schools located in historically disinvested and primarily Black neighborhoods, with many of the schools' serving areas of the city with high unemployment and crime rates" (University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, 2018, p. 3).

Many of these students in these communities are disproportionately affected by poverty and crime, experiencing segregation from other communities. As a result, education across neighborhoods differs in quality. Students in neighborhoods with crime and poverty have less access to resources and spend more time repeating lessons than middle-class students (Rothstein, 2014, p. 1-2). These differences in educational quality and resources became more apparent through the COVID-19 Pandemic. In September 2020, 110,000 Chicago students did not have access to broadband internet, resulting in CPS distributing electronic devices to students, devices that were often of poor quality or did not last long (Chicago Teachers Union, 2022).

Furthermore, the neighborhoods of Englewood and Austin lacked proper internet access compared to their north side counterparts. Despite operating within the same school district and city, Chicago students are presented with very different realities in education. This effect is known as the "digital divide" in which individuals who can effectively use new information and communication tools, such as the Internet, and those who cannot are differentiated (Afzal et al., 2023, p. 5). The existence of such a gap only supports the existence of different curricula for different groups of people, curricula that shape the very thoughts and pathways of students.

Personalized tutoring and the Hidden Curriculum of AI

Since the release of Open-AI's Chat-GPT, the global AI craze took the world by storm, ushering a new era of AI integration into every facet of the digital world. Consequently, AI became easily accessible to students and as a tool, has dramatically shaped education. Due to its abilities to generate content, solutions to problems, and essays, the educational landscape had to shift to adapt. Since its release, generative AI and artificial intelligence has been adopted as a tool to tailor educational content to the many different needs of students (Karataş et al., 2024, p. 3). AI technology has been utilized to rapidly generate new learning materials for students, along with personalized feedback, allowing more time for students and teachers to collaborate (Karataş et al., 2024, p. 3).

However, not all students have the same knowledge of AI. In a 2023 study, familiarity with AI tools increases with income level and is better known by White teenage students than Black and Hispanic teens (Lee et al., 2024, p. 7). With these advantages of AI, many students with a lack of technology access miss out on the experience to gain a personalized education that can suit their dynamic needs. This can especially hurt students with special needs and learning disabilities in low-income areas that may benefit from a personalized educational tool.

Since its release, AI skills are starting to show up in job listings with 74% of listings mentioning AI (Stahle, 2025). By not gaining experience with AI in schools, and by looking for AI skills, employers are singling out a large portion of low-class, low-income students from easily obtaining certain positions. As a result, company hiring shifts to the upper and middle classes, leaving the low-class, low-income students not worthy of employment. The hidden curriculum continues to teach low-class, low-income students that they may not be worthy of skilled careers and tailor-made educational content.

The Future Ahead, helping Students Overcome the Educational Gap in Chicago

Despite the long-lasting presence of these educational gaps, income gaps, racial inequality, and technological inequality, new policy and methods of intervention are being deployed to ensure students among different neighborhoods, classes, and races can have equal educational opportunity. One such method would be the expansion of housing voucher systems. In a 1990s study, New York City implemented a program named MTO in which students and families were given vouchers to help move from lower income areas to higher income areas, resulting in safer schooling for children and better academic performance (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2004, p. 16). While these vouchers may be a band-aid solution in solving the overall segregation issue in schools and inequality, such programs allow families to get the needed help to move out of dangerous or low-income areas into higher income areas. Furthermore, by scattering low-income earners around neighborhoods with the use of vouchers, the achievement gap between income and races may be reduced as every group of individual gains access to more equal resources (Rothstein, 2014, p. 8). Voucher systems can help the life and education of students outside of school, however, there are some things that can be done inside of schools to help. Increasing funding equity and training for teachers can help teachers develop and adapt to curriculum (Slavin, 1999, p. 10). By supporting funding equity, teacher workshops, and increasing funding for teachers, educators across different schools within the same district will be given the same resources, letting students across different neighborhoods and schools receive the same curriculum. Above all else, bringing attention to the educational gap in Chicago and the unequal access of technology and AI education, along with its use cases, can create the movement for change. To make change and progress through policy, the public and policy makers need to be more aware of the educational circumstances and inequalities students face (Rothstein, 2014, p. 8). Without the support from the public, it will be difficult to pass laws and policy that can get the necessary funding and attention to even out the educational circumstances of students in Chicago and the broader United States.