According to Kozol, property taxes are an unjust funding basis for schools because they fail to challenge the status quo of racial-based inequality. Kozol concludes that the disparities in school quality perpetuate inequality and constitute de facto segregation.
Key Terms de facto segregation : When races are separated not by any law, but by everyday practices. The scope of taxable property varies by jurisdiction, and it may include personal property in addition to real estate. I would encourage the decentralization of school systems so that teachers, principals, parents, and sometimes students themselves could have more input into determination of curriculum, for example. I would like to see a more sweeping decentralization of school administration, but in saying that, I want to be very cautious.
I'm not implying that most of our school superintendents are incompetent, and I'm certainly not implying that inefficiency is the major problem in the public school system. There is a lot of inefficiency, but the big issue is abject destitution. It's a lack of enough money. It's interesting. People will tell you big inner-city school systems are poorly administered and that there's a lot of waste.
They never say that about the rich suburban school districts. The spotlight shines only on the impoverished district. You mentioned site-based management. Many educators are urging that schools be restructured. They believe that site-based management offers communities a chance to run schools more efficiently.
Do you agree? I encourage more site-based management, but to me that's a secondary issue. The fact is that restructuring without addressing the extreme poverty of the inner-city schools—what will it get us? It will give us restructured destitution. And that's not a very significant gain. If the New York City schools were administered with maximum efficiency, without a single dollar wasted, they would still be separate and unequal schools.
They would be more efficient segregated and unequal schools. But that's not a very worthy goal. Let's talk a little bit about curriculum innovations—for instance, the idea of reaching at-risk kids in ways that are usually reserved for the gifted. Teaching algebra to remedial students, for instance. Dissolving the tracking system. What are your opinions about these solutions to problems of inequity? When I was a teacher, tracking had been thoroughly discredited.
But during the past 12 years, tracking has come back with a vengeance. Virtually every school system I visit, with a few exceptions, is entirely tracked, although they don't use that word anymore. It's not just that tracking damages the children who are doing poorly, but it also damages the children who are doing very well, because, by separating the most successful students—who are often also affluent, white children—we deny them the opportunity to learn something about decency and unselfishness.
We deny them the opportunity to learn the virtues of helping other kids. All the wonderful possibilities of peer teaching are swept away when we track our schools as severely as we are doing today.
The other thing, of course, is that tracking is so utterly predictive. The little girl who gets shoved into the low reading group in 2nd grade is very likely to be the child who is urged to take cosmetology instead of algebra in the 8th grade, and most likely to be in vocational courses, not college courses, in the 10th grade, if she hasn't dropped out by then. So, it's cruelly predictive.
There's also a racist aspect to tracking. Black children are three times as likely as white children to be tracked into special-needs classes but only half as likely to be put in gifted programs. That's an intolerable statistic in a democracy. It's a shameful statistic. There's no possible way to explain it other than pure racism. It's one of the great, great scandals of American education. Some say that the real problem is not equity but excellence. What's your reaction to those who say we must not spend money until we know what really works in education?
The problem is not that we don't know what works. The problem is that we are not willing to pay the bill to provide the things that work for the poorest children in America. And we have not been willing for many, many years. All they need to do is to take a bus trip out to a high school in Wilmette and see what money pays for. All they need to do is go out and see schools where there are 16 children in a class with one very experienced teacher.
All they need to do is visit a school with IBMs; a school where the roof doesn't leak; a school that is surrounded by green lawns, where the architecture and atmosphere of the school entice people to feel welcome; a school in which the prosperity of the school creates the relaxed atmosphere in which the teachers feel free to innovate, which they seldom do under the conditions of filth and desperation.
What I'm saying is rather irreverent, I realize, but this is why I always sigh with weariness when I hear about the newest network of effective, essential, or accelerated schools. I say, I've seen these prototype models come and go for years and they sure do make reputations for the people who sponsor them. Foundations will support them and business partners will get on board so long as it's in fashion.
If the issue in America were truly that we don't yet know what works, what arrogance would lead us to believe that we are just now on the verge of finding out? But critics of our schools are saying that there are schools that have all kinds of equipment and materials and resources but where the academic curriculum isn't very good, where kids aren't learning that much. There are those who say the schools don't need to be fixed for the poor children only; they need to be systemically reformed to benefit all children.
What about that argument? I don't subscribe to the fashionable notion these days that all our schools are failing. I don't buy the argument that it isn't just the poor kids, it's all our kids; that suburban kids have it bad, too, and we need to make these changes for everybody.
I don't really think that's true. In his visits to these schools, Kozol discovers that Black and Hispanic schoolchildren are isolated from white schoolchildren and are shortchanged educationally. Racial segregation is supposed to have ended, so why are schools still segregating minority kids?
In all of the states he visited, Kozol concludes that real integration has declined significantly and education for minorities and poor students has moved backward rather than forward. He notices persistent segregation and bias in poorer neighborhoods as well as drastic funding differences between schools in poor neighborhoods versus more affluent neighborhoods.
The schools in the poor areas often lack the most basic needs, such as heat, textbooks and supplies, running water, and functioning sewer facilities. For instance, in an elementary school in Chicago, there are two working bathrooms for students and the toilet paper and paper towels are rationed.
In a New Jersey high school, only half of the English students have textbooks, and in a New York City high school, there are holes in the floors, plaster falling from the walls, and blackboards that are cracked so badly that students cannot write on them. Public schools in affluent neighborhoods did not have these problems.
It is because of the huge gap in funding between rich and poor schools that poor schools are faced with these issues. Kozol argues that in order to give poor minority children an equal chance at education, we must close the gap between rich and poor school districts in the amount of tax money spent on education. The outcomes and consequences of this funding gap are dire, according to Kozol. As a result of the inadequate funding, students are not simply being denied basic educational needs, but their future is also deeply affected.
There is severe overcrowding in these schools, along with teacher salaries that are too low to attract good teachers. To Kozol, the nationwide problem of high school dropouts is a result of society and this unequal educational system, not a lack of individual motivation. One says six. Another says that school begins at noon. Smokey cannot decide if he is in the second or third grade.
Seven-year-old Mickey sucks his thumb during the walk. The children regale me with a chilling story as we stand beside the marsh.
Smokey says his sister was raped and murdered and then dumped behind his school. She was beaten with a brick until she died. The murder was committed by a man who knew her mother. I ask them when it happened. Then they knock her down and told her not to tell what they had did. I care for them. I hope his mother have another baby. Next to it is a modern school, erected two years ago, which was to have replaced the one that they attend.
But the construction was not done correctly. The roof is too heavy for the walls, and the entire structure has begun to sink. As the children drift back to their homes for supper, Sister Julia stands outside with me and talks about the health concerns that trouble people in the neighborhood. In the setting sun, the voices of the children fill the evening air.
Nourished by the sewage marsh, a field of wild daffodils is blooming. The street is calm. The sewage is invisible and only makes the grass a little greener. Bikes thrown down by children lie outside their kitchen doors.
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