If you’re a senior, you’ve probably already been asked your plans for next year approximately 1,684 times this year. The question comes up everywhere: when you’re grabbing coffee in Libe Cafe, when you’re studying in the Cocktail Lounge, when you were home with your folks for Fall Break, even at what should be a bastion of freedom from the question — Collegetown bars.

More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve run into old friends at Rulloff’s and engaged in the obligatory small talk. We ask each other where we’re living, who we’re dating and how our classes are going. But eventually, the conversation always ends up coming back to the dreaded question of our plans for next year.

The pressure of having an answer to the recurring question has pushed many of the class of 2007 into action. Seniors are putting the finishing touches on their law school personal statements, doing last minute studying for the GREs and figuring out which professors should write their recommendations. Others are experiencing the pleasure of flying in and out of the Ithaca Airport for interviews in New York City with familiar and prestigious names like Lehman Brothers, McKinsey & Company and CitiGroup.

Like many of my classmates, I’ve spent much of my last week preparing for an upcoming interview. I’ve been running around campus picking up letters of recommendation, preparing answers for all the normal interview questions and securing official transcripts from the Registrar’s office. However, one piece of my interview preparation is a bit different from most of my classmates. Instead of prepping for a case interview, I spent yesterday creating a lesson plan and worksheets. This difference is because the position I’m applying for is to become a 2007 corps member for Teach For America.

I am often asked about my decision to apply to the Teach For America corps by my friends, family and classmates. “Why, when you could do almost anything, would you want to become a teacher in one of the nation’s most-impoverished communities?” they ask.

For me, the answer is simple. More than 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared that separate could not be equal, our schools remain incredibly segregated. In the Atlanta Public School system, for example, blacks make up 88 percent of the school population, while whites account for only a paltry 7 percent. On the other side of the country, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the ethnic breakdown of students is 73 percent Latino/Hispanic, 12 percent black and 10 percent white.

The achievement gap between whites and Latinos and blacks is staggering. At the end of high school, black and Latino students have reading and mathematics skills that are roughly the same as white students in eighth grade. Beyond that, black students are half as likely as white students to have a college degree by age 29, and Latinos are only one third as likely.

But it’s not just a question of racial and ethnic segregation. These inner city and rural schools, comprised almost entirely of minorities, are also our nation’s poorest schools. Students in South Bronx public schools are receiving only $11,000 per year for their education, while their peers in the posh Manhasset (Long Island) public schools receive $22,000 each year.

Any student who’s taken an education or sociology course at Cornell knows the statistics. 9 year-olds in low-income communities are already 3 grade levels behind 9-year-olds in high-income communities.

We can even see the effects of educational inequity here in Ithaca. Students at Ithaca High School that come from backgrounds that are not economically disadvantaged have an 87 percent graduation rate. Those that do come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, on the other hand, have only a 49 percent graduation rate.

The solution to ending educational inequity, however, is under our control. This achievement gap exists not because of differences in intelligence or motivation. It stems from differences in resources. Students in Compton are no less excited about learning than their more-affluent peers in Malibu, nor are they less bright. When given the resources they need to succeed, these students flourish.

However, right now, many of the students in our nation’s lowest-income schools are being deprived of these resources, both inside and outside of the classroom. Pre-K programs, a key to academic success, are scarce in these communities. These schools do not have enough qualified teachers; some students have substitute teachers for years. Classrooms are often cramped and unpleasant, and textbooks are always in short supply. These are the same children who often do not have proper medical care or nutrition. Staggering proportions of the adults in their communities are incarcerated. Poverty abounds.

So why have I chosen to go back into the classroom next year, rather than entering into the business world or grad school? While I cannot speak for everyone, my decision to apply to Teach For America has nothing to do with an abstract notion of charity for those less privileged than I, or guilt for being born into a white, middle-class family. As Jonathan Kozol reminded a Cornell audience a few weeks ago, “charity is not a substitute for justice.” Our nation’s fight against educational inequity is a fight against poverty and injustice. I hope you’ll join me in fighting what I believe to be our generation’s most pressing civil rights issue.

Laura Taylor is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be contacted at lat34@cornell.edu. Kind of a Big Deal appears Tuesdays.