Portland Public School High School

In the article “Fremont high school”, Jonathan Kozol describes how the inability to provide the needed funding and address the necessities of minority children is preventing students from functioning properly at school. He talks to Meriya, a student who expresses her disgust on the unequal consideration given to urban and suburban schools. She and her classmates undergo physical and personal embarrassments. Kozol states that the average ninth grade student reads at fourth or fifth grade level while a third read at third grade level or below. Although academic problems are the main factor for low grades, students deal with other factors every day. For example, School bathrooms are unsanitary, air condition does not work, classrooms have limited

Epstein, K. K. (2006). A different view of urban schools: Civil rights, critical race theory,

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.

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.

It has become common today to dismiss the lack of education coming from our impoverished public schools. Jonathan Kozol an award winning social injustice writer, trying to bring to light how our school system talks to their students. In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal," Kozol visits many public high schools as well as public elementary schools across the country, realizing the outrageous truth about segregating in our public education system. Kozol, cross-examining children describing their feelings as being put away where no one desires your presence. Children feeling diminished for being a minority; attending a school that does not take into consideration at the least the child’s well being. Showing clear signs of segregation in the education system.

America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems of schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement. Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s

Our culture in America puts a huge emphasis on the value of education. However, not all children in America receive the same benefits from school. Jonathan Kozol, author of The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, explores the feelings of those in lower-income districts and the inequality they feel. Kozol focuses on how younger children, elementary schoolers, look around and see richer schools while their own school is run-down and falling apart. People are very aware of the score gap between rich schools and poor schools. Despite our awareness, we miss the main point by trying to close the “word gap”. This gap will only grow larger as poor school districts are economically disenfranchised repeatedly,

Geography played a huge part in my experience with K-12 education. In the study titled, The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools (2012), Logan, Minca, and Adar noted that inequalities of performance between schools that have a majority of minority groups and found connections between the performance of school when looking through the lens of race and ethnicity. Key findings included that African American, Hispanic, and Native American students were most likely to attend a school that averages between the 35th-40th percentile (Logan, Minca, Adar 2012). Three types of high poverty schools were outlined; location in city center, majority African American and mixed location, and majority Hispanic (Logan et al., 2012). The school district that I attended for my K-12 education experience was nearly 95% white, located in the suburbs, and had low poverty. My education experience directly counters the education experience that my student engage in on a daily basis. This has created an internal motivation to

For my entire life of schooling, both my parents and I would agree that I constantly complained about the educational systems in which I was enrolled. But when I actually take the time to think about everything I have been through, I realize that I have indeed had an excellent education. My schooling was full of opportunities and experiences, all of which contributed to the person I am today; adequate education has been an indispensable facet of my being. Sadly, not everyone has had this same privilege. And now as a college student, I am becoming even more aware of this sad fact. Looking around me in such a diverse city as Chicago, I find myself being more and more grateful. When I read Jonathan Kozol's Fremont High School, this these

Being a senior in high school has showed me many problems with my school. I have had both good and bad experiences so far. Most situations are not as extreme as they were at Fremont High School. With that being said, some problems with my high school might surprise you.

The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the harsh truth of public school systems, and how they have become an isolation and segregation of inequality that students are subjected to; as a result, to receive an education. Throughout the essay, Kozol proves evidence of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face in the current school systems across the country. Kozol supports his testimony by providing the reader with factual statistics and percentages, of how segregated the public school systems have become within many major cities. He exposes the details and statistic of how wealthier schools received better funding and opportunity than the low-income and poverty struck school systems throughout the major cities across the country.

Growing up a Caucasian, upper-middle-class child in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I remember feeling perplexed every time I visited my neighborhood grocery store. While the groceries in one part of the store served a demographic population similar to my own, the other items catered to the low-income, predominately African-American population located in the adjacent neighborhood. My grocery store mirrored the demographic make-up of my city, yet was not reflected in my educational trajectory. My parents, like many financially secure families in my area, sent me to a private college-preparatory school to escape the deficiencies of the public school system in East Baton Rouge Parish. While white

In the mid-to-late 1950s African Americans were not allowed to be in the same breathing space as a white person, let alone the same school. Now today, any individual of any race can freely enter into any building and still receive quality teaching. A special thanks are for the nine brave history changers; Minnijean Brown, Terrance Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Watts. If it wasn’t for these students who endured the discomfort, students today will not be able to enjoy the comfortableness of being a high school student.

In the article entitled, A Tale of Two Schools: How Poor Children Are Lost to the World, by Jonathan Kozol, the writer is comparing the differences between New Trier High School, a school in Illinois that’s nestled in an affluent neighborhood against Du Sable High School, a school situated in an impoverished neighborhood that has 100% African American student in attendance. The article sadden and confirms things that myself and many others are already aware of, but has not been able to change. Schools located within the poor communities are

“Education is a system of cultural meanings that educators, students, and communities attach to everyday schooling practices; and these patterns of meaning have serious implications for educational opportunity” (Carter, 144). In the city of Naperville, IL cultural alignment through institutions such as schools serves to maintain, preserve and conserve the community’s reputation being one of the ““Top 5 Best Places to Live in America”. I will further explore how schools maintain the identity of their community through institutions such as schools; specifically I will focus on Naperville Community Unit School District 203 (the fifth largest school system in Illinois). I will also argue that the district and city directly and indirectly