5 sentences on the Big Picture:
In the book The Shame of the Nation, Kozol attacks the disparity in expenditures on education between central cities and wealthy , and the system of property taxes which most for funding school systems and states rely on. It describes how, in the United States, Black and Hispanic students tend to be concentrated in schools where they make up almost the entire student body. Kozol found that conditions had grown worse for inner-city children in the 50 years since the Supreme Court in the landmark ruling of Brown v. Board of Education dismantled the previous policy of segregated schools and their conceit of "separate but equal". In many cities, wealthier white families continued to leave the city to settle in suburbs, with minorities comprising most of the families left in the public school system. I agree that conditions have worsened since Brown vs. Board of Education but it has been ignored or overlooked.
4 Key Passages
1. Chapter One Pages 20-21
“ In the new era of ‘separate but equal’, segregation has somehow come to be viewed as a type of school reform”- “something progressive and new,” Professor Orfield writes- rather than as what it is: an unconceded throwback to the status quo of 1954. But no matter by what new name segregated education may be known, whether it be “neighborhood schools, community schools, targeted schools, priority schools, or whatever other currently accepted term, “segregation is not new… and neither is the idea of making separate schools equal. It is one of the oldest and extensively tried ideas in U.S. educational history” and one, writes Orfield, that has “never a systematic effect in a century of trials.”
2. Chapter Three Page 76
“”Level Fours, please raise your hands,” the principal requested at in one such assembly. In front of nearly all their schoolmates, those very few who were described as “Level Fours” lifted their arms and were accorded dutiful applause. “Level Threes, please raise your hands…,” the principal went on, and they too were rewarded with applause. “Level Twos…,” she asked, and they were given some applause as well. What lesser portion of applause, one had to wonder, would be given to the Level Ones, who were the children reading rock bottom? The Level Ones, as it turned out, got no applause at all. “The principal didn’t ask the Level Ones to raise their hands,” according to the teacher who described this series of events to me. “It was like the Level Ones weren’t even there.”
3. Chapter Five Page 116
There is no “test prep” for these kinds of genuine assessments. Teachers would have no reason to drill children in advance because the purpose of these tests is not to judge the child or the teacher but to gather information that is helpful to the both. A teacher, moreover, does not have to wait to be informed by test scoring company how well or poorly individual children, or the class in the entirety, are doing. The teacher’s observations of her students and the running record that she keeps as they progress through assessment are what matter, and the information that she gains does not need to be evaluated by a stranger in a distant city working for testing before it can be considered “Accurate” or “useful.”
4. Chapter 5 Page 130
“Not the place but the path, not the goal but the way,” he wrote to me a few months later, recollecting Dr. Coles’s response. I recognized the gratitude he felt to Dr. Coles for reaffirming his belief that pre-established “destination” were not everything but that “the journey” had some meaning too. I remember thinking how disruptive this idea would be in many of the classrooms that I visit nowadays. The destination shapes the journey in those classrooms, excavating mysteries, invalidating unpredictables, eclipsing whim, excluding risk, denying pilgrimage.
3 Key Terms
1. page 68; Primitive utilitarianism- referring to a set of theories about management of factory employees introduced by Frederick Taylor in the early 1900’s
2. page 76; servile tabulation- Teachers who are forced to spend so many hours compiling these lists and charts and matching mini-skills with numbers for each lesson that they teach told me that they sometimes feel reduced…..continuous cross-references between the learning of the children and the state mandated skills and numbers that are posted on the wall
3. page 124: test -driven teaching is a doxology- The heart of the doxology is the unquestioned faith that there is one straight road, and one road only, to be taken and that every stage along the road must be annunciated-stated on the walls, reiterated by the teacher—in advance.
2 Connections
1. I have experience being bused from my poor neighborhood to another school that was 35 minutes from my home. It was a better school to attend. The school had less violence and more academic rigor. But, I felt bad knowing that when I return back to my neighborhood, that the kids didn’t get the same education that I had.
2. Even at Baylor, there aren’t many minorities in my class. For instance in two of my education courses, I am the only black person in one of my classes of 40 + students and 200+ in another. Often times when the discussion of race or minorities comes up in class, I sometimes feel that I am the go to guy or the representative of minorities. It feels awkward. I wish more classrooms were more diverse.
1 Question
1. If you were a student from a suburban school system, would you be willing to attend an inner city public school for one year?
