Books like Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

Two cases of mothers lying about where they reside in order to get their young children into better school districts have made news recently. In Ohio in January, Kelley Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in county jail and three years probation for enrolling her children in the Copley-Fairlawn School District rather than Akron, where she lived. "School officials said she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it," said an ABC article. "Those dollars need to stay home with our students," said officials with the Copley-Fairlawn district, which went to the trouble and expense of hiring a private investigator to film the mother driving her children into the district. They demanded she pay $30,000 in back tuition, for four years of schooling. When she refused, she was indicted.In Connecticut in April, Tanya McDowell, a homeless single mother from Bridgeport, is being charged with larceny and conspiracy for enrolling her 5-year old son in Norwalk schools, fraudulently using a friend's address. If convicted, she could face 20 years in prison.Jonathan Kozol wrote Savage Inequalities twenty years ago, but obviously its lessons haven't taken hold. Kozol described the vast funding disparities between rich and poor school districts in America, due to the way public education is primarily (or initially) funded by local real estate taxes. Local taxes on the value of homes and businesses in the district form the base of per-student funding. "In the wealthiest districts, this is frequently enough to operate an adequate school system," writes Kozol. In poor districts, because the properties are worth less, tax revenues will be inadequate and the state is supposed to kick in sufficient funds to raise the amount to a level approximately equal to the richest districts. In practice, this rarely happens, which is why schools in rich districts are lavishly equipped, teacher salaries are much higher, class sizes are smaller, textbooks are plentiful and up to date, athletic facilities are abundant, libraries are full of books, bathrooms are clean, and students white. In poor districts the opposite is true.Kozol tells tale after tale of deprivation. A 16-year-old South Bronx student in 1990 "is facing final exams, but, because the school requires students to pass in their textbooks one week prior to the end of the semester, he is forced to study without math and English texts." Another student says, "Most of the students in this school won't go to college. Many of them will join the military. If there's a war, we have to fight. Why should I go to war and fight for opportunities I can't enjoy - for things rich people value, for their freedom, but I do not have that freedom and I can't go to their schools?" He writes of science classes with no lab equipment, bathroom stalls with no doors, classrooms with leaking ceilings, playgrounds covered in broken glass, schools next door to factories belching dangerous levels of pollution. Bad teachers who are unwanted in better off schools are unloaded onto worse schools. Everything conspires against equality, and of course the children are the ones who are made to suffer.Kozol reminds me of Howard Zinn in the way he sees neutrality on an issue as pointless, even detrimental. The worlds that Kozol and Zinn looked at aren't neutral places. Power structures and systemic inequality are already in place; children are born into them. The question is, do we do anything to ameliorate these inequalities, or not? Money doesn't solve education inequities, is a constant refrain of conservatives, wealthier school districts, some reformers, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. "Throwing" more money at poor, poorly-performing districts wouldn't do much if anything to improve them, they argue. Yet if anyone suggests redistributing school funds - taking money from rich districts and giving it to poor districts - the screaming, moaning and wailing reach a fever pitch. So it seems money does matter for rich districts, just not for poor ones. "Local control" is another buzzterm for keeping rich districts rich and poor districts poor.Kozol quotes President George H.W. Bush (a product of the very expensive Phillips Andover Academy) weighing in on education spending:More spending on public education, said the president, isn't "the best answer." Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money "as a cure" for education problems. "A society that worships money...," said the president, "is a society in peril."Paradoxically, Kelley Williams-Bolar and other parents like her are almost always paying taxes at a higher rate than their wealthier neighbors, notes Kozol (despite the school district's contention that Williams-Bolar was "cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it.") Poor, inner city residents pay at higher rates, but less of what they pay goes to education, because so much of it goes to services like police and fire protection.Every American ought to read this book. Whether or not you have children, whether or not they attend public school, whether or not you pay real estate taxes, you ought to read this book. Published 20 years ago, it remains profoundly relevant. It informs current debates about education reform; it ought to inform our opinions about the Michelle Rees and Wendy Kopps of the world. (Ree is the lavishly praised, reformist former head of D.C. public schools, Kopp the lavishly praised, reformist creator of Teach for America. Ree is now under something of a cloud for unsubstantiated claims on her resume and for a D.C. testing scandal; Kopp has never really been able to substantiate with hard statistics all of the media praise TFA has gotten.) Children who fail in school, who fail to learn, who drop out, have fewer and fewer jobs and opportunities available to them. Increasingly they end up in prison, where they cost us more than if we'd just spent the money to give them a safe school and a decent education. Even if you care nothing about education you ought to read this book because the way we treat children, whether ours or anyone else's, defines who we are as humans.