Midterm Essay

Dear President Obama,

I want to begin by extending my gratitude for allowing me to serve as a representative on the “U.S. Commission for Improving the Quality of Education Opportunity for Marginalized Children in the United State.” After reading Jonathan Kozol’s book, the Shame of the Nation, it opened my eyes to the changes that need to be made in our education systems.

Kozol starts off his book by declaring that the United States of America are participants in “apartheid schooling.” Many times before I had heard this term but never really meditated on it or thought that it applied to our lives in the U.S. Thanks to Kozol, I am now aware that there is apartheid happening in the country that we live in today. He 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.

After visiting nearly 60 public schools in preparation for writing this book, 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 de jure 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.

Throughout his book, Kozol focuses on what he calls apartheid in the American educational system. Too often today people think of apartheid as merely a term that refers to a moment now relegated to political history but the truth is that so many people are blind to how deeply segregated our schools have become all over again. During the decades following Brown v. Board of Education there was amazing progress, tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. Since 1990 when the Rehnquist court started ripping apart the legacy of Brown, the court sort of took their teeth out of the situation. During these years our schools have rapidly segregated and the gaps in skills between minorities and whites have increased again.

Kozol does a good job at attacking schools that are racially segregated, but the fact that they don’t offer the same quality of education is also an important issue he discusses in the book. Too often schools segregate children and place them in isolation because they are afraid of contaminating their own schools. This is sending destructive messages for young black students and they recognize it very well. Kozol attacks the disparity in expenditures on education between central cities and well-to-do suburbs, and the system of property taxes which most school systems and states rely on for funding. He expresses outrage at inequities in expenditure, pointing out that New York City in 2002-3 spent $11,627 on the education of each child, while in Nassau County, the town of Manhasset spent $22,311, and Great Neck $19,705. He found that there are comparable disparities in other metropolitan areas, since most funding is locally based. Kozol describes schools that are separated by a 15-minute drive but that offer vastly different educational opportunities. In one example, a primarily white school offers drama club and AP classes, and the nearby primarily black school requires classes like hairdressing.

This whole re-segregation that is taking place in the United States today is something I feel is overlooked on way too many occasions. People often tend to be blinded by the fact that this is actually taking place and it is just making the situation worse rather than better. There is only so much that citizens can do without the help of the government. It is vital to the future of our students and our country that we realize that schools all over the U.S are not simply just segregated but are wildly unequal.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to express my feelings and concerns about education in today’s society. I hope that you will take mine and Jonathan Kozol’s thoughts into great consideration to help us as teachers make our lives and our students lives better.

Sincerely,
Jessica Roberts