Historically, poverty has had a heavy impact on education stemming directly from segregation policies during the 1800's. This has led to significant disparities in academic achievement and opportunities for those children affected, while also affecting the lives of those children later on in their typical and professional lives. 

Segregation has been a significant source of educational inequity in America with minorities, particularly Black and Latino students, not receiving the same quality of education as their white counter parts. This issue began with the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 which established the "separate but equal" doctrine which legally permitted racial segregation (Smithsonian, 2022). This then led to the Jim Crow era where Black American children were confined to overcrowded, poorly resources schools, often far from their homes, and taught by underpaid Black teachers (History, 2018, November 28). The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 aimed to dismantle segregation declaring it inherently unequal and unconstitutional (Smithsonian, 2022). Dispute this legal victory, systemic issues persisted. Income equality and discriminatory housing patterns maintain educational segregation. For example, in 1968 77% of Black students and 55% of Latino students attended majority-minority schools, a situation that remained largely unchanged by 2010 with 74% of Black students and 80% of Latino students still attending such schools (Smithsonian, 2022). These underfunded schools and fewer educational resources perpetuated the cycle of poverty and limited opportunities for minority students in the past, and even still today (Smithsonian, 2022).