Savage Inequalities: Children In America’s Schools

1. Savage Inequalities: Children In America’s Schools Author Jonathan Kozol

2. Main Ideas • Education in the United States is not following the path of Brown v. Board of Education but more along the lines of Plessey v. Ferguson in the Reagan – Bush era. • Before you start on this reading, think about movies for a minute. Remember a movie called Lean On Me, the story of Joe Clark and East Side High. Morgan Freeman played the crazy Joe Clark, the bat wielding principal that threw 300 of the worst students out of East Side High in an effort to raise the test scores. What were the results: the scores went up, and 200 out of those 300 students ended up in prison at a cost of $60,000 a year. • The main theme of the book covers the inequalities that are present in 5 different areas of the nation. I could not write justification to that was in the book, so I have pulled quotes from the book to show the harshness of the situation.

3. The story starts in East St. Louis • The dangers of exposure to raw sewage, which backs up repeatedly into the homes of residents in East St. Louis, were first noticed in 1989, at a public housing project, Villa Griffin. Raw sewage, says the Post-Dispatch, overflowed into a playground just behind the housing project, which is home to 187 children, “forming an oozing lake of tainted water.” Two schoolgirls, we are told, “experienced hair loss since raw sewage flowed into their homes.” • Later, at the mission, Sister Julia tells me this: “The Jefferson School, which they attend, is a decrepit hulk. 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…” • Compounding these problems is the poor nutrition of the children here – average daily food expenditure in East St. Louis is $2.40 for one child – and the under immunization of children here. • In a seventh grade social studies class, the only book that bears some relevance to black concerns – its title is The American Negro – bears a publication date of 1967.

4. Next to Chicago • The salary scale, too low to keep exciting, youthful teachers in the system, leaves the city to rely on low-paid subs, who represent more than a quarter of Chicago’s teaching force. “We have teachers,” Mrs. Hawkins says, “who only bother to come in three days a week. One of these teachers comes in usually around nine-thirty. You ask her how she can expect the kids to care about their education if the teacher doesn’t even come until nine-thirty. She answers you, ‘It makes no difference. Kids like these aren’t going anywhere.’ The school board thinks its saving money on the subs. I tell them, ‘Pay now or pay later.’ ” • This degree of equanimity in failure, critics note, has led most affluent parents in Chicago to avoid the public system altogether. The school board president in 1989, although a teacher and administrator in the system for three decades, did not send his children to public schools. Nor does Mayor Richard Daley, Jr., nor did any of the previous four mayors who had school age children. • In 1989, Chicago spent some $5,500 for each student in its secondary schools. This may be compared to an investment of some $8,500 to 9,000 in each high school student in the highest spending suburbs to the north. Stated in the simplest terms, this means that any high school class of 30 children in Chicago received approximately $90,000 less each year than would have been spent on them if they were pupils of a school in the suburbs.

5. Our Journey continues to East Side High in New Jersey • We spend about $ 4,000 yearly on each student,” he reports, as we are heading to the cafeteria for lunch. “the statewide average is about $5,000, but or children are competing also with the kids in places such as Cherry Hill, which spends over $6,000, Summit, which spends up to $ 7,000, Princeton, which is past $ 8,000 now…” • What does the money buy for children in New Jersey? For high school students in East Orange, where the track team has no field and therefore has to do its running in the hallways of the school, it buys a minimum experience but a good deal of pent-up energy and anger. In mostly upper-middle-income Montclair, on the other hand, it buys two recreation fields, four gyms, a dance room, a wrestling room, a weight room with a universal gym, tennis courts, a track, and indoor areas for fencing. It also buys 13 full-time physical education teachers for its 1,900 high school students. East Orange High school, by comparison, has four physical education teachers for 2,000 students, 99.9 percent of whom are black.

6. Inequalities in New York • Average expenditures per pupil in the city of New York in 1987 were some $5,500. In the highest spending suburbs of New York…funding levels rose above $11,000, with the highest districts in the state at $15,000. • If the New York City schools were funded, for example, at the level of the highest-spending suburbs of Long Island, a fourth grade class of 36 children such as those the author visited in District 10 would have $200,000 more invested in their education during 1987. Although a portion of this extra money would have gone into administration costs, the remainder would have been enough to hire two extraordinary teacher at $50,000 each, divide the class into two classes of some 18 children each, provide them with computers, carpets, air conditioning, new texts and reference books and learning games – indeed, with everything available today in the most affluent school districts – and also pay the costs of extra counseling to help those children cope with the dilemmas that they face at home. Even the most skeptical detractor of “the worth of spending further money in the public schools” would hesitate, I think, to face a grade school principal in the South Bronx and try to tell her that this “wouldn’t make a difference.”

7. Next is the nation’s Capital • You live in certain areas and things are different,” Gregory explains. Not too long ago, the basement cafeteria was flooded. Rain poured into the school and rats appeared. Someone telephoned the mayor: “You’ve got rats here in the cafeteria.” • We did a comparison of school in Washington and school out in the suburbs. A group of business leaders went with us. they found it sobering. One of them said, “if anybody things that money’s not an issue, let the people of Montgomery County put their children in the D. C. Schools. Parents in Montgomery would riot” • “The D.C. schools are 92 percent black, 4 percent white and 4 percent Hispanic and some other ethnics. There is no discussion of cross bussing with the suburbs. People in Montgomery and Fairfax wouldn’t hear of it. It would mean their children would have to cross state borders. There is a regional cooperation on a lot of things. We have a regional airport, a regional public transit system, and a regional sewage disposal system. Now when it comes to education.

8. Finally to Texas • Seven minutes from Alamo Heights, at the corner of Hamilton and Guadalupe, is a Cassiano – a low-income housing project. Across the street from the Cassiano, tiny buildings resembling shacks, some of them painted pastel shades, hose many of the children who attend the Cooper Middle School, where 96 percent of children qualify by poverty for subsidized hot lunches and where 99.3 percent are of Hispanic origin. At Cooper, $2,800 is devoted to each child’s education and 72 percent read below grade level. Class sizes range from 28 to 30. Average teacher salary is $27,000. In Alamo Heights, where teachers average $31,000, virtually all students graduate and 88 percent of graduates go on to college. Classes are small and $4,600 is expended yearly on each child. • In 1988, Alamo Heights spent an average of $46 per pupil for its “gifted” program. The San Antonio Independent District, which includes the Cooper Middle School, spent only $2 for each child for its “gifted” program. In the Edgewood District, only $ 1 was spend per child for the “gifted” program.

9. What keeps these things going • There are two things that keep this going; • Policy makers • People.

10. Policy makers When people think that things are bad, they will be bad. A case in point is Thompson from East St. Louis. In this quote we see how someone who sees things as bad sharing his view with the rest of the people. • Governor Thompson, however, tells the press that he will not pour money into East St. Louis to solve long term problems. East St. Louis residents, he says, must help themselves. “There is money in the community,” the governor insists. It’s just not being spent for what it should be spent for.” The governor, while acknowledging that East St. Louis faces economic problems, nonetheless refers dismissively to those who live in East St. Louis. “What in the community,” he asks, “ is being done right?”

11. People Another way things stay bad like this is to have people who have positions of power making statements that are not correct or even close to the mark. Here are a few examples of this: • Noting that excellent math and science teachers are in short supply in New York City, Glazeer asks, “ If they are to scarce, is their effectiveness maximized by scattering them…or by their concentration…I think that there is a good argument to be made that their effectiveness is maximized by concentration. They, like their students, have peers to talk to and work with and to motivate them.”

12. How do we change this? I think that the best way to change all of this above is to take what we know about education and put it into action. We know that classes need to be smaller and we know that we need more money into education. Kozol talked about the foundation in the funding systems and said that was is done is to find the point where the minimum is being provided and let the schools fund themselves after that. I think that his next statement was the best. Fund them equally, by bring the low ones up, not the high school down. Make is so that all schools are equally high and therefore good, not cheat one group to make another better. He points out in his book that many protectors of the system as it is now will say that the extras do not make a difference, so poor schools do not need them. He then asks for the leader to take the extras that are not needed away and give them to the poorer schools.

13. What can we do to make things better? I think that the saddest thing about the situation at the time that this book was written is that like Kozol said we are back to when Plessey was discussed, not when Brown was decided. There has to be something done soon, we are barely holding on to our students at Valley High, and we have it sort of good there. What would we do if we were like Sacramento City, working with tax free sites that effect the funding that the school gets each year. Just remember that something needs to be done and you and I are the only ones that can do anything about it.