Read Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. Kozol examines the inequities in school financing between Urban and suburban schools, Chapter 3 (2 points)…
The United States has a long history of intolerance. From the moment we arrived in this country and killed thousands of Native Americans, to today, a large population of American people remain stubbornly opposed to accepting individuals who are different from the “norm.” A classic example of this intolerance was the creation of the suburban Levitt town in the 1950s, where residents William Myers and his family were subjected to hateful crimes because “[they were] Negros in an all-white community” (Racism in the United States). More recently in 2010, plans to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York were met with “anger, passion, and more than a little information...calling the project a ‘grotesque mega-mosque tied to terrorism.”…
In the TED Talk How America’s Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty spoken by Kandice Sumner, she spoke of the unfair advantages that richer kids have over poor kids in America when it comes to the education system. She first opens up her speech by telling her audience about her children, all of which have the ability to become something wonderful, but because their “real” parents lack the money they can’t. I believe that she is correct, and that is simply because the system is faulty. I believe that the American education system relies too much on money provided, typically, by the surrounding neighborhoods in the form of property taxes. These taxes are the sole reason that schools are failing, next to an assortment of reasons as well. Property tax is, just as its name implies, taxes on people’s properties.…
The author of Savage inequalities is Jonathan Kozol and this chapters describes life in East St. Louis. East St. Louis is a black community on the Mississippi floodplain. Kozol states that East St. Louis is the most distressed small city in America. The people of East St. Louis are exposed to the burning garbage and foul chemicals from nearby industries. The people are also exposed to toxic waste, raw sewage, and the dangers of lead poisoning. The city, which is 98% black, has no obstetric services, no regular trash collection, and few jobs for the people there. The schools lack qualified teachers, and the schools are so broken-down it would amaze most Americans. This city of East St. Louis is isolated from its wealthy neighboring cities…
In his book, “The Shame of the Nation”, Jonathan Kozol outlines core inequalities in the American educational system. According to Kozol although great steps were made in the 1960s and 1970s to integrate schools, by the end of the 1980s schools had begun to re-segregate. In inner cities such as Chicago, eighty-seven percent of children enrolled in public schools were either black or Hispanic, and only ten percent were white (page#). It seems that there are many different factors contributing to the re-segregating of schools.…
“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race” (Tavernise, 2012). The gap is so very significant that many Americans are worried and are speaking up in order to get attention to this growing issue. With these education budget cuts, some states cannot find the economical resources to support all local community school therefore hiring teachers that have a lower level of training or fresh out of college. “Economically disadvantaged schools tend to pay teachers less, resulting in many of their teachers leaving for better-paying jobs elsewhere after a few years. Therefore, these schools tend to have more inexperienced teachers than those in wealthier districts…
In 1964, the author, Jonathan Kozol, is a young man who works as a teacher. Like many others at the time, the grade school where he teaches is of inferior quality, segregated, understaffed, and in poor physical condition. Kozol loses his first job as a teacher because he introduces children to some African American poetry that subtly questions the conditions of blacks in America. Years later, after holding many other socially conscious jobs, Kozol misses working with children. He decides to visit schools across America to see what has changed since those early days of reform. What he learns is horrible. Many schools have student bodies that are still separate and unequal. The remainder of the book details his observations over that year and suggests causes for this shocking state of affairs.…
And most of the time, the teachers who are working for a poorer school district, don’t want to spend the extra time helping or they aren’t as qualified as teachers who get paid a higher rate. Many of the teachers who work for poorer school districts have to get other jobs to make a living, which means that the teachers don’t have time to stay longer with children who are struggling. Black children don’t have the same resources as white families. This means that they are not going to learn as much and as well, as kids who go to wealthy schools. In the long run this leads to many black children dropping out of school or not going to college.…
This creates unequal opportunities for families because if they live in a poor neighborhood, their taxes fund the schools, so they have poor schools, and they are not allowed to attend schools outside of their city limits. Therefore, a vicious cycle is created where…
Many Families have paid a significant amount of money to put their kids in school when at times tuition is barely affordable and some families do not qualify for financial aid. The Income Achievement Gap is an income inequality that imbalance in academics achievement between high and low-income students. For example,1 in 5 children in the united states lives in poverty which makes them likely to start school behind higher-income students. (childtrends.org) Majority of schools goals are bringing in students and making money off them which I understand but some do not work with low-income families on giving them a chance to send their children to a good school and make sure they are successful.…
In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” Jonathan Kozol gives us a very detailed presentation of the emergent trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools. Kozol provides substantiation to his claim based on his research and observations of different school environments, its teachers and students, and personal interviews with them. It is very clear that color of education in America is not green like the dollar bill; it is white if you’re rich and brown if you’re poor. What’s more atrocious is how the government of the people gives more educational benefits to the rich and less to the poor.…
Stereotyping is assuming that a group of people are all the same because they share race, religion, nationality and the like. Most urban neighborhoods house blacks, Hispanics, and other immigrants; since America tends to view these people as ignorant or stupid, why would they bother building a better educational curriculum to go to waste on these people who are not capable of learning anyway. This stereotyping can lead to another likely cause of inequality, the mirror image perception where people tend to see those outside of their own group as either all bad or all good. In this case those who can afford to live in the suburbs seem to assume that the individuals living in the slums don't care about education since they are uneducated themselves. Even though it is probably more likely that they live in these areas because they just don't make enough money to live elsewhere, the suburbanites don't seem to see it this way. Their reasoning allows them to not do anything to change the level of education in these schools because they can say well if they don't care why should…
Education is a vital tool to economic security. However, Melissa Marschall (1997) has found that current policies demonstrate minorities have been denied equal access to education. She has found that assignment systems based on assessments of language deficiencies or other individual needs are used to separate non-whites from whites. According to Jeffrey J. Mondack and Diana C. Mutz (1997), inequitable school financing is equally detrimental to non-white students. Funding for public schools comes from property taxes. They go along to say that predomintly non-white schools tend to be in central inner city school districts which have a smaller property tax…
One of the most significant issues raised in public education in recent years is the radical difference that exists in funding levels between wealth and poor school districts (Zuckman 749). Many states have allotted educational funding related to tax revenues, and this has determined a higher level of educational spending in wealthy neighborhoods and a much lower level of spending for inner-city poor and rural poor communities (Zuckman 749). Because of this focus,…
The zip code housing market is a great example of systemic inequity. The amount of money a public school receives depends on the property taxes in the district. Therefore, schools in wealthier communities receive more funds to put toward better teachers, classroom resources, and extracurricular activities. Each state controls its own public education, meaning it can tailor its curriculum by using different textbooks or methods of learning. This can create a disconnect between the states.…