Chapter 2 Summary. Casey Hayes. Uiw University. . . . .

In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Jonathan Kozol brings our attention to the apparent growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools (309-310). Kozol provides several supporting factors to his claim stemming from his research and observations of different school environments, its teachers and students, and personal conversations with those teachers and students.

Resources that schools receive are different depending on the area the school is in. Students in low-income neighborhoods do not have the same opportunities as the students in higher income neighborhood. These underprivileged schools are overcrowded and does not have the means necessary to better the student’s education.

The book, Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling, tells us about the problems that inner-city students face in schools across America. There is an apparent problem with discrimination towards black and poorer families within some suburban districts. The effect of this is a vicious cycle of limited/ scare resources of educational opportunities for students. Author, Lewis-McCoy examines a suburban area in which a “promised land” of educational opportunities and beneficial resources has failed to live up to it’s name. America’s suburbs are seeing an increase in diverse families, yet there is still a challenge of giving equal and high quality educational opportunities to them.

“Still Separate, Still Unequal”, written by Jonathan Kozol, describes the reality of urban public schools and the isolation and segregation the students there face today. Jonathan Kozol illustrates the grim reality of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face within todays public education system. In this essay, Kozol shows the reader, with alarming statistics and percentages, just how segregated Americas urban schools have become. He also brings light to the fact that suburban schools, with predominantly white students, are given far better funding and a much higher quality education, than the poverty stricken schools of the urban neighborhoods.

Schools systematically subjugate minority and black students when a school’s enrollment contains a huge racial majority. If students have no exposure to persons of different ethnicities, cultures, races, and religions, then these students will experience culture shock when they confront “other” people. Even in our class, we talk about black and minority students as another group, one that differs from “us.” We think about the inequalities in school systems as problems we need to fix, not as problems that have influenced our thinking and affect us as prospective teachers. For example, a white graduate student with

In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal” by Jonathan Kozol, the situation of racial segregation is refurbished with the author’s beliefs that minorities (i.e. African Americans or Hispanics) are being placed in poor conditions while the Caucasian majority is obtaining mi32 the funding. Given this, the author speaks out on a personal viewpoint, coupled with self-gathered statistics, to present a heartfelt argument that statistics give credibility to. Jonathan Kozol is asking for a change in this harmful isolation of students, which would incorporate more funding towards these underdeveloped schools. This calling is directed towards his audience of individuals who are interested in the topic of public education (seeing that this

“When we can predict how well students will do in school by looking at their zip code, we know we have a serious systemic problem” (Gloria Ladson-Billings 20). When we are able to forecast how a child will perform by where the child resides, then how can we say that every child is receiving quality education. The unsuccessful educational system infused into the United States is affecting the majority of minorities. In the United States students due to their race and social class, suffer from underfunded public schools, inexperienced teachers, and housing segregation, which in turn inhibit their opportunity to succeed through education. These difficulties plaque students from the very beginning of their public school experience and follow them throughout their academic life. There are a few solutions to these issues but they have to be implemented and enforced with a slow integration.

Kozol acts as if segregation is the problem when in fact it could be perfectly fine. All the inner city kids need is the right tools. But I believe that even if they have all of the proper materials and instruments after having generations of dropouts and acceptance of failure there will not be an overnight change. What the people in those area have as a way of life and education is all that they know so change is difficult to achieve. As for teachers while they may not like the challenges of working in those schools there are perks. As i have learned through my mom who is a teacher when she looked for jobs, the jobs in those types of schools offers the teachers more money to work there since not many want to. Most of the inner city schools are considered title one or high need schools meaning that the teachers who work there get their student loans paid off by the government just for working there. If those schools were to disappear or merge with schools doing better off it can have catastrophic results of the teachers of inner cities getting laid off or lose money by being transferred into a “better” school. The students at the better schools performances might drop due to being mixed with lower academically capable students who has not been raised in the same environment of school being a top priority and being told to go

The American education system is failing the generations of the future. Society neglects the children born into impoverished areas, while mainly white upper class children participate in superior educational activities. Low-income neighborhoods often produce schools with low scoring students. Therefore the government transitions these schools into impersonal factories. The phrase diversity masquerades the reality of re-segregation of schools. Many schools across the country are utilizing the phrase diversity, yet the statistics reveal that over ninety percent of the students are black or Hispanic. Creating successful environments is extremely difficult and subsequently results in serious consequences for the American education system.

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol explains the inequalities of school systems in different poor neighborhoods. Kozol was originally a teacher in a public school in Boston. This school didn’t have very many resources and was unable to keep teachers for very long. After pursuing other interests, Kozol took the time from 1988-1990 to meet with children and teachers in several different neighborhoods to better understand issues relating to the inequality and segregation in the school systems. Kozol writes from his own perspective as he visits six different cities and the poorest schools in those cities. These cities consist of East St. Louis in Illinois, the South Side of Chicago in Illinois, New York City, Camden in New Jersey, Washington

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

As the three largest cities in the United States, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are also epicenters of precipitous segregation. Even with the passage of federal law to curtail segregation and promote more integrated communities, conditions have only improved minimally – if at all – between 1980 and 2000.

The federal government played a role in establishing and maintaining residential segregation in metropolitan areas. For example, Rothstein states that after the New Deal and World War II, federally funded public housing was explicitly and racially segregated (5). The projects were designated for either whites or blacks, later becoming increasingly black. Neighborhoods that were historically segregated still continue today with the very same characteristics – racially and economically homogeneity. Children who grow up in and attend schools in these neighborhoods encounter what Sherman refers to as “youth disconnection”. In essence, youth disconnection is the lack of exposure to important influences that help with human development. Sherman takes into account statistics about disconnected youth which include being twice as likely to live in poverty, three times as likely to leave high school without a diploma, half as likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree, and etc (“How Disadvantages Caused by Residential Segregation End Up Costing Billions”). How can students thrive in environments that are historically segregated and disadvantaged? Access to a better education along with other influences beneficial to development should to be decided based upon the location in which a student

This segregation started way back when after world war two ended and soldiers who came home and wanted to buy homes, but could only buy homes in certain areas is the start of the this residential and school segregation. Because of this separation, it started to create segregated communities that eventually led us to know and are still the same as the were back then. Reskin states, “As researchers have thoroughly documented, blacks and whites are segregated into different neighborhoods. Although segregation declined in smaller cities in the recent past, America’s largest cities remain highly segregated on the basis of race” (Reskin 20). Because of the housing segregation, this caused the separation of residential areas and schools. You see this a lot with inner-city schools and communities. Many inner-city schools today, are predominantly African American school kids. One way myself and other leaders could help address this issue is to start a charity for inner city schools, one for them to get a better education and be able to start their lives outside of the

An urban issue that we face as Portlanders is trying to maintain the things that make our city so great, amid the influx of new residents. I believe the key to a successful community lies in our public schools. This is the place that best reflects the surrounding neighborhoods and prepares children to go out into the real world and interact with all the people of their community. It allows kids to empathize with the struggles of others and gears them towards a life of compassion at a formative age. Successful schools start with funding across the board, and a realization that the state has a duty to supplement schools with additional funding that they are less inclined to get from the enrolled families. It is no secret that a school based