All Kids Deserve Good Schools : Provocative new book documents system of separate and unequal public education

There is a great and shameful divide in the nation’s public schools. In many affluent and predominantly white school districts, students typically enjoy rich, varied and superior choices, according to Jonathan Kozol in his dramatic new book, “Savage Inequalities,” excerpted in this section today. In many poor and predominantly minority areas, students attend separate and unequal schools that offer desperately few choices.

In his journey between different worlds, Kozol found segregated, dirty, slum-like, isolated schools where poor black and Latino children used torn and antiquated books and makeshift equipment. He chronicled the common plights: Not enough teachers. Not enough academic courses. Not enough paper, pencils or heat. And that’s just inside the classroom. Kozol also took the reader through bathrooms with toilets that didn’t flush, laboratories with equipment that hadn’t been replaced for decades.

He contrasts these dismal campuses with opulent campuses of privilege. Many of these have common attributes: white students and excellent, well-paid teachers assigned to small classes. Modern, well-appointed classrooms. Superior science labs and up-to-date computer technology. Advanced English and math classes, numerous foreign-language, music, art and drama classes. Such resources are eminently desirable, of course, but why not for all?

Kozol’s prescription is for a better method of financing public education. In Illinois, for example, federal funding accounts for a mere 6% of public education budgets. State funding--the great equalizer, at least in theory--pays for about half the pie. The remainder comes from local funds raised from property taxes--and this leads to huge gaps: In Illinois, per-student spending ranges from as little as $2,100 to more than $10,000, depending on the district.

These disparities exist even in states such as California--which mandates equal state spending per pupil--because affluent school districts raise money through tax-exempt foundations and gifts from well-to-do parents.

Kozol’s provocative book doesn’t raise the issue of the need to restructure bloated and unresponsive public school bureaucracies. It also avoids the touchy issue of the responsibilities of parents--of all income groups--to do more to prepare their children for school. He asks nothing of the victims of this imbalanced system, only, as one reviewer put it, “that they elicit our sympathy.”

But that cannot detract from the important question that Kozol’s book raises: Has this nation turned its back on the Supreme Court’s historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruling--which outlawed separate and inherently unequal schools?