Review of Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities

EDSE 5001
Why the Author Wrote This Book
Jonathan Kozol wrote Savage Inequalities because he wanted to bring issues of inequality and
desegregation in education into the national conversation. He found that urban schools were often
“extraordinarily unhappy places,” where “police sometimes patrolled the halls,” and the windows were
“covered with steel grates” (5). “The fact of racial segregation,” he writes, “has been and continues to
be largely uncontested” (4). Kozol wrote this book to highlight the fiscal inequality and racial
segregation that he discovered in America’s poor, urban, and largely black schools.

Kozol also wanted to give poor children the opportunity to express their opinions and experiences. He
writes that “the voices of children, frankly, had been missing from the whole discussion” of education
(5). Since children are “often more interesting and perceptive than the grown-ups are about the day-to-
day realities of life in school,” Kozol felt that they would have something to contribute to an assessment
of education. Their “voiced and their judgments,” he felt, should find a place within “the nation’s
dialogue about their destinies” (6). And so he included them in his book.

The Impact of Poverty in Schools Today

Poverty impacts schools in a variety of different ways. The poverty level of a school has an effect on the
achievement level of the students. “In schools with above average poverty rates, the poverty level of
the school influences the scores of all children, including those from more advantaged families”
(Mapping out the National Assessment of Title I). A school may also have difficulty attracting and
retaining the best teachers if the poverty level of a school is too high. “Students in underachieving poor
and minority districts are more likely to be taught by under-qualified teachers than those in better-
performing, affluent white districts” (Montgomery). Students whose families live below the poverty line
may also have inadequate health care and the illnesses that result, making it more difficult for them to
learn. Some such illnesses have a behavioral component, making the student harder to teach. All of
these factors make it more difficult for a poor student to get a quality education at their schools.

Summary
Introductory Chapter “Looking Backward: 1964-1991”
In the brief introductory chapter of Savage Inequalities, Kozol reflects on his early years in teaching. He
mentions that he first taught in an urban school in Boston, where he was quickly fired for teaching
poetry that was considered to be above the fourth-grade level. After several more successful years of
teaching and pursuing other interests, Kozol decided to get back into the public school system. He spent
two years visiting various American cities, speaking with children, teachers and principals. Kozol finds
himself shocked by the persistent segregation that continued to exist in many of these schools. He
discovered that inner city schools were sometimes located in neighborhoods so bad that Taxi drivers
refused to enter. He was horrified to find that these schools were entirely black. In observing the
classrooms of these schools, Kozol found that the children themselves understood that they were
victimized by poverty and segregation.

Chapter 1 “Life on the Mississippi: East St. Louis, Illinois”

The first full chapter of the book discusses the poverty and racial segregation found in the city of East St.
Louis. The city lies on the Bottoms, the lowlands of the east bank of the Mississippi River. At the time
this book was written, the city was described as “98 percent black” with “no obstetric services, no
regular trash collection, and few jobs” (7). According to Kozol, the city is full of trash heaps and
surrounded by chemical plants emitting unhealthful fumes. East St. Louis’ city hall has been awarded to
a creditor in court as part of the fallout from severe fiscal shortages. Most of the city’s employees were
laid off. The counterpoint to this unremittingly bleak picture, according to Kozol, is the Illinois Bluffs,
which “surround the floodplain in a semicircle” (9). These are nice towns with full services. Kozol
writes, “Towns on the Bluffs are predominantly white and do not welcome visitors from East St. Louis”
(9). Kozol writes that there was a “pattern of concentrating black communities in easily flooded
lowland areas” that is “not unusual in the United States” (9). He goes on to discuss the largely black
community of Sugar Ditch, where schoolchildren live and play beside lakes of raw sewage that
periodically invade their homes. Kozol says that “Metaphors of caste like these are everywhere in the
United States” (10).

Back in East St. Louis, soil testing discovered large quantities of arsenic, mercury, lead and steroids.
When Kozol goes on a walk with several local children, he finds them to be under-grown, “troublingly
thin,” and extremely poorly educated (12). One of the children tells Kozol that his 11-year-old sister was
recently raped and murdered behind the school. The other children wish that her spirit might come
back and “get that man” (13). According to Kozol, the streets of East St. Louis are rife with violence.
“State troopers are routinely sent to East St. Louis to put down disturbances that the police cannot
control” (21). There are an astonishing number of homicides every year. The people have no escape
from the violence of their surroundings, because their schools are so inferior. Sewage floods the
kitchens and bathrooms, teachers are underpaid and overworked, and the schools lack essential
equipment. Chemistry and physics labs are unused, because the equipment used in these labs is beyond
the schools’ budgets. Textbooks are ancient, erroneous, or simply absent. The sports programs lack
nearly all of the needed equipment. Their facilities do not have heat, and some of the ceilings are
unsafe. “The basic essentials are simply missing here,” Kozol quotes a football coach, Bob Shannon, as
saying (26).

Kozol, however, suggests that the racial segregation of the school needs to be addressed even before
the crucial shortages. He quotes a high school boy as saying, “Going to school with all the races is more
important than a modern school” (31). The children have read Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”
speech, but they feel it’s “perfunctory” (35). “All that stuff about ‘the dream’ means nothing to the kids
I know in East St. Louis,” one student says. “So far as they’re concerned, he died in vain. He was famous
and he lived and he gave his speeches and he died and now he’s gone. But we’re still here” (36). Kozol
closes the chapter by observing that “East St. Louis will likely be left just as it is for many years to come”
(39).
Chapter 2 “Other People’s Children: North Lawndale and the South Side of Chicago”
Kozol begins this chapter by commenting that “one searches for some way to understand why a society
as rich and, frequently, as generous as ours would leave [the children of East St. Louis] in their penury
and squalor for so long…Is this just a strange mistake of history? It is unusual? Is it an American
anomaly?” (40). Kozol proposes to answer this question by investigating certain other schools in this
chapter. North Lawndale, the city where Martin Luther King once lived, is another hulk of empty
buildings and cheerless schools. Kozol observes a Kindergarten class in a large, sparse room,
commenting on the teacher who is “not particularly gentle” (44).

There is some relief from the dismal outlook, however. “Even in the most unhappy schools,” Kozol
writes, “there are certain classes that stand out like little islands of excitement, energy, and hope” (47).
He observes Corla Hawkins, who brings enthusiasm, energy, and careful teaching in her fifth-and-sixth-
grade classroom. She enlists the aid of parents, asks the students to teach each other, and buys most of
her materials herself, “because it never works to order things through the school system” (49). She
gives abundant homework and makes sure each student has her phone number. She tells the parents to
make sure their child uses that number whenever they have questions. Her students are exposed to
museums on Saturdays, and she offers their parents tutoring for the GED. Kozol writes that, “there are
wonderful teachers such as Corla Hawkins almost everywhere in urban schools,” but there are not
enough of them to turn this school around (51).

There is, according to Kozol, a general shortage of teachers in the area. One student observed, “we
have been in this class a whole semester, and they still can’t find us a teacher” (52). Another teacher
sleeps through almost every class. In the 18 poorest high schools in Chicago, “only 3.5 percent of
students graduate and also read up to the national norm” (58). Kozol makes the argument that it is hard
to tell young people to stay in school when they aren’t learning anything in school anyway. This stands
in violent contrast to the charmed life of students at a school like New Trier High. These students have
an abundance of advanced classes and well-equipped labs to prepare them for success in high-paying
careers. Kozol proposes that the difference between these schools, one a nightmare, the other an ideal,
is money and racism. Kozol writes that, “A new generation of black urban school officials has been
groomed to settle for a better version of unequal segregated education” (82).

Chapter 3 “The Savage Inequalities of Public Education in New York”

Kozol begins the third chapter with the observation that “Denial of the means of competition is perhaps
the single most consistent outcome of the education offered to poor children in the schools of our large
cities” (83). He visits a school in the North Bronx that is located in an older roller-skating rink. It is a
dark building with low ceilings, no windows, and no yard. There is a funeral home next door. Two or
more classes often share a single small space, and the overcrowding is oppressive. The school is
underfunded and in poor repair, and very few of the students are white. The difference between this
and a school Kozol visits in Riverdale are profound. This school has been integrated “in the strict sense”
that white children “do occupy a building that contains some Asian and Hispanic and black children”
(93). However, the “vast majority of the Hispanic and black children are assigned to ‘special’ classes on
the basis of evaluations that have classified them ‘EMR --‘educable mentally retarded’ --or else in the
worst of cases, ‘TMR’ --‘trainable mentally retarded’” (93). Kozol indicates that the classes that prepare
students for great success in the world are reserved for white children and children of Asian descent.
“Whether consciously or not, the system writes off its poorest students” (99).

At Morris High in the South Bronx, the principal focuses on getting the students beyond the basics. Even
as the building disintegrates around them, he ensures that these poor students are exposed to theatre
and poetry. Kozol observes that “New York City has a number of selective high schools that have special
programs and impressive up-to-date facilities” (106). These schools compete for the best teachers and
the brightest students. This creates a concentration of mediocre teachers and unmotivated students in
other schools. Kozol claims that he is not arguing for the eradication of selective schools. He writes that
if there were not “truly bad schools,” then “it would do little harm if certain of these schools were even
better than the rest.” But that is not the situation that Kozol sees. In poor schools across New York City
there is rampant overcrowding and underfunding. No one knows exactly what the dropout rate is, but
estimates run as high as fifty percent. Children may be truant for months without school attendance
officers even noticing. Kozol quotes one principal as saying that “we have children who just disappear
from the face of the earth” (113). “When a school board hires just one woman to retrieve 400 missing
children from the streets of the North Bronx,” Kozol concludes, “we may reasonably conclude that it
does not particularly desire to find them.” (115).

Kozol spends some effort in this chapter pointing out how inequality in the school system seems
deliberate. He says that schools “ could make dramatic changes overnight if fiscal equity were a reality”
(123). While acknowledging that urban schools are sometimes poor managers of the funds that they
have, Kozol suggests that focusing on these problems is less important than addressing the difference in
amount of money. Doing so, he says, “is a formula that guarantees that nothing will be done today for
children who have no responsibility for either problem” (124). Before concluding the discussion of New
York City’s schools, Kozol visits a high school in Rye, New York. The school is well funded, and teacher
salary is high. In his discussion with the eloquent students of this school, he finds that they are not
unreservedly enthusiastic about fiscal equality for schools and racial integration. In the discussion, as
transcribed by Kozol, the students appear to be self-centered, naive, and indifferent to the needs of
poor black children. The end of the chapter asks “how much would it really harm” the children of Rye to
“compete in a fair race?” (132).

Chapter 4 “Children of the City Invincible: Camden, New Jersey”

This chapter might be re-titled, “all about the money.” Kozol spends the first several pages describing
an article in the Wall Street Journal that had the temerity to suggest that money does not buy better
education, and therefore more money should not be directed to poorly performing urban schools.
“Affluent people,” Kozol responds, “seldom lack for arguments to deny to others the advantages they
enjoy” (135). Camden, New Jersey, is another poverty-stricken town filled with empty buildings, dirty
industry and a largely non-white population. It is located five minutes away from Cherry Hill, a fairly
well-off town with a mostly white population. The students of Camden have many health problems, and
the majority of their families survive on some kind of public assistance. Their schools lack books, lab
equipment, and other essentials. The state mandates test results, and as a result, the teachers can do
nothing but teach to the tests or lose state funding. All the students learn is that “education is a brittle,
abstract ritual to ready them for an examination” (144).
Students in the more prosperous community of Cherry Hill take the same examinations, but their
preparation is significantly different. The students of Camden don’t have the books, the computers, or
the labs that the students of Cherry Hill use. When Kozol asks the students of Camden where the
money should come from to make their school like the schools in Cherry Hill, one student replies, “If
there’s a surplus, say, in Cherry Hill, well, you could divide that money” (153). The children think that
the funding for both schools should be equal. Kozol asks, “Don’t they have the right to keep that money
there and use it to buy things that they may want for their own school?” (154). A student replies, “What
could they possibly want that they don’t have?”

A class action law suit was filed in 1981 by “parents of schoolchildren in East Orange, Camden, Irvington,
and Jersey City” (166). The judge found in the plaintiffs’ favor, acknowledging that the state of New
Jersey “operates two separate and unequal public education systems.” The verdict ran for 600 pages.
According to the court, the New Jersey constitution “requires that all students be provided with an
opportunity to compete fairly for a place in our society” (168). According to the court, “The failure has
gone on too long… The remedy must be systemic” (170). The court’s unequivocal decision for the
plaintiffs led to speculation that “efforts might at last be taken to apportion educational resources in
more equitable ways” (170). But there was swift opposition from wealthier districts, and political
pressure was brought to bear.

Chapter 5 “The Equality of Innocence: Washington D.C.

Kozol opens the fifth chapter by insisting that no one in power wishes to see real equity in American
education. “What they mean,” he says, “what they prescribe, is something that resembles equity but
never reaches it” (175). He means that they want education to be fair enough to silence critics, but also
unfair enough to ensure that the privileged retain their advantage. He quotes a Maryland task force on
equity in school funding whose findings recommended 75 percent equality for the poorest schools in
Maryland. Kozol quotes a mother who believes that such inequality is received as a message by the
poorest children: “By doing this to you, we teach you how much you are hated” (179).

Some of the children learning this awful lesson live in Anacostia, a community that lies just alongside the
“politics and power” of D.C. (181). One child says that “the first thing she would do if somebody gave
money to her school would be to plant a row of flowers by the street” (181). Her first priority is comfort
for the eyes and the soul. “Make it a beautiful clean building,” she says, “make it pretty. Way it is, I feel
ashamed” (181). Kozol quotes an urban planner that he met as saying, “white people would destroy
their schools before they’d let our children sit beside their children” (185). So the black children in the
poorest schools and worst neighborhoods suffer from racism. “You couldn’t permit this sort of thing,”
Kozol quotes a journalist as saying, “unless you saw these children and their parents as a little less than
human” (191).

The end of this chapter is spent in proving that the individuals in power do see these people as less than
human. “It’s very important that the city has some nonwhite people as administrators of the schools…
The presence of a white man at the head of a large urban system that is warehousing black children
would be quite suggestive and provocative” (195). Kozol stresses that, in this way, urban school
authorities are made to appear innocent of racism, while the nonwhite administrators themselves are
available as scapegoats. With schools still segregated and underfunded, administrators make little
difference other than offering somewhere to place the blame. And that system seems unlikely to
change, since taxpayers in wealthy districts are “not going to vote for more taxes so that the poor black
kids” in other districts can have a better education (199).

Chapter 6 “The Dream Deferred, Again, in San Antonio”

Kozol states that if “Americans had to discriminate directly against other people’s children,” then he
believes that “most citizens would find this morally abhorrent” (207). But direct action in discrimination,
he says, is not usually necessary. Instead, “inequality is mediated for us by a taxing system that most
people do not fully understand and seldom scrutinize” (207). The first portion of this chapter goes
through the process of scrutinizing that system. According to Kozol, the system is supposed operate by
taxing local properties to provide funding for the school. If these taxes do not supply sufficient funds,
then the state steps in to make up the difference. Thus everyone has a “foundation” of adequate funds
for adequate schooling. Kozol writes that most states choose to supply a “low foundation,” that will
supply enough funds to offer a “basic education” to everyone, but “not an education on the level found
in the rich districts” (208). But it is seldom as simple as that. State governments also supply ‘incentives’
to get the wealthy districts to buy into any kind of equity plan. ‘Local control’ is touted as bringing more
precision and efficiency to individual districts. The end result is continued inequality between school
districts.

In 1968, Demetrio Rodriguez and some other parents in the poor district of Edgewood filed a class-
action suit claiming that the education being provided for their children was inadequate and unequal. In
1971 a district court found in their favor, but the decision was appealed to the Supreme Court. The
decision was reversed. “In cases where wealth is involved,” Kozol quotes the verdict as saying, “the
Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality” (215). In 1989, another suit was brought,
and the “school funding system in the state of Texas” was “found unconstitutional under state law”
(225). Demetrio Rodriguez was vindicated. But not much happened in the way of changes for funding
the schools. Finally, in 1984, Edgewood joined with seven other poor school districts and brought suit
against the state and 48 rich districts” (226). Eventually the Texas legislature approved a new funding
formula, but most of the desired effects have not been noticed. “Twenty-three years after Demetrio
Rodriguez went to court, the children of the poorest people in the state of Texas still are waiting for an
equal chance at education” (229).

In the closing pages of the book, Kozol visits one last poor school. It is the only school in the book that is
filled with poverty-stricken white children. This is a “truly dreadful” school in Cincinnati filled with “the
children of poor Appalachian whites” (229). The neighborhood “is industrial,” with “smoke and chemical
pollutants” clouding the air. The classrooms are bleak, underfunded, and outdated. The school will
embark next year on a cross-bussing program intended to “mix them with the children of the black
schools on the West Side” (232). Wealthier schools will not be included in the program. “All our
children ought to be allowed a stake in the enormous richness of America,” Kozol concludes. “Surely
there is enough for everyone within this country. It is a tragedy that these good things are not more
widely shared” (233).
The Book and Classroom Practice Today
There are not a lot of ideal classrooms described in this book. Instead, major absences are felt in almost
every school. Classroom practice today emphasizes many of the needs that Kozol sees in the classrooms
described in the book. Teachers are encouraged to use manipulatives, have students experience
phenomena on their own, and keep class size small so that teachers can provide differentiated
instruction.

The only successful classroom that Kozol describes in any detail belongs to Mrs. Corla Hawkins. Her
classroom is full of “a clutter of big dictionaries, picture books and gadgets, science games and plants,
and colorful milk cartons, which the teacher purchased out of her own salary” (Kozol 47). Mrs. Hawkins
understands that manipulatives are an important part of the classroom. Teachers of today have an
enormous range of choices for their classrooms, and teaching by manipulatives is emphasized in classes
and at conferences. When these tools of teaching are missing from the classroom, it can become “a
rather cheerless space,” like the one Kozol finds at another school. Here “there are very few of those
manipulable objects and bright-colored shelves and boxes that adorn suburban kindergarten
classrooms” (Kozol 44). The teacher of this classroom lacks the manipulatives that Mrs. Hawkins, and
the teachers being educated today, employ to great effect.

It cannot be denied that a teacher needs certain equipment in order to be the best teacher possible.
Some lesson plans call for specific equipment that must be present, or the lesson plan must be
discarded or adapted. Kozol observes one teacher trying to teach from such a lesson plan without the
proper equipment. Students are expected to grasp an understanding of the way waves are formed
without a water surface large enough to form waves. “Because the children do not have appropriate
equipment,” they are learning that water splashes, nothing more (Kozol 140). Teachers today are
encouraged to let students discover natural phenomena, rather than teach it directly to them, but
students who have no equipment have no other options than to learn it directly from instruction.

In many of the schools in Kozol’s book, students do not really even have that option. The class sizes are
so very large that teachers never have the opportunity to interact directly with the students as
individuals. It is emphasized in teacher-preparation courses today that a teacher must provide
‘differentiated instruction’ to each student. It is necessary that every individual has the opportunity to
interact with the teacher and come to a personal understanding. The schools that Kozol observes have
class sizes so large that the teachers find it difficult to remember their students’ names, let alone give
them differentiated instruction. According to one of the students that Kozol spoke with , the teachers
his previous school had “the time, you know, to make sure that you understand. In this school, they
sometimes do not have the time…And, you know, it does take time for kids to understand” (Kozol 153).

Manipulatives, appropriate equipment, small class size and differentiated instruction are all important
components of the successful modern classroom. The poor schools that Kozol visits lack all of these. It
is necessary for a school district to spend money on all of these things, after all. The districts that Kozol
visited before writing this book simply did not have the money to spend.
Strategies to Remedy the Challenges in this Book
Any school funding system is complex. Issues of segregation and racism are not only complex, but also
emotional and often inflammatory. In discussing proposed strategies to remedy the challenges posed
by Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, it is important to note that such remedies are by necessity
limited. No single remedy can be complete for every person in every situation, regardless of how
appropriate it might be for most situations. Nevertheless, the strategy I will recommend here is
intended to be adaptable. Broad solutions should always be applied to individual situations with the
greatest of care. With that said, I propose that offering a system of school choice using an equitable
voucher approach would remedy the challenges brought out in this book.

The school voucher plan essentially offers parents the choice to take their share of school taxes and
state and/or federal school aid and apply it to the school of their choice. This offers poor parents the
chance to send their children to better schools than they can afford on their own. It enables minority
parents to send their children wherever they believe is best for their children’s future. It allows schools
to compete in a free market, forcing the worst schools to improve while the best schools prosper and
grow. The plan offers excellent education for everyone while fighting fiscal inequality and segregation.
At the same time, it avoids the rather un-American practice of taking money away from the people who
earned it and giving it to people who did not.

There are, of course, a number of dissenting opinions. Many people believe that school vouchers will
not work, that public schools will collapse, that the statistics on test scores and academic success will
continue to decline or worse, take a nosedive. Fortunately, certain school systems have already taken
the plunge, and the resultant data from these early adopters can help ease the fears described above. I
noted with some interest that certain of these early adopters are the same school districts described so
chillingly in Kozol’s book. It strains credulity to believe that this is entirely a coincidence.

In Washington D.C., for instance, the school voucher system is called

the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The U.S. Department
of Education recently released a report of the results of this program.
“The OSP had a significant positive impact on parent-reported high
school graduation rates” (United States 51). When you break this
down, “82 percent of those offered scholarships graduated compared
to 70 percent of those who were not offered scholarships, a difference
of 12 percentage points. The impact on graduation of actually using a
scholarship to attend private school was 21 percentage points” (United States 51). In other words,
students who applied for the voucher and used it to attend a private school had a graduation rate of 91
percent. This is especially remarkable considering that the graduation rate for students in Washington
D.C.’s regular public school system is only 49 percent. Another voucher program in Milwaukee has
improved graduation rates there. It is worth noting that this twenty-year-old program specifically serves
poor minorities. It “has allowed mostly poor and black parents to choose any school—public or private,
religious or secular—for their children to attend” (Richwine).
Edgewood ISD, an impoverished district near San Antonio, Texas, should be familiar from the graphic
descriptions in the last chapter of Savage Inequalities. From 1998 to 2008, Edgewood offered a school
voucher program to the poor minority students of this district. The vouchers were available to all
students who applied, with no restrictive lottery system like the one described above. Remarkably, the
benefits of this program were not reserved for the voucher recipients. The report found that there were
“improvements in the public schools in response to increased competition” (Merrifield). The graduation
rate increased in the public schools by 16.8 percent. This should certainly ease the worry that a voucher
system will damage public schools.

It cannot be denied that this is not the solution endorsed in Kozol’s book. He would prefer a Robin Hood
solution, taking money from richer districts and putting it in poorer, minority districts. He advocates
“cross-bussing” and forced desegregation. As much as I sympathize with his frustration at the poor
condition of some of the schools he describes, I cannot agree with this solution. I cannot help but think
that one’s views on funding are influenced greatly by one’s position as a producer of money or as a
distributer of money. Kozol wishes to be a distributer, but I find myself in the position of producer. I
dislike the idea of taking money away from the people who have earned it. One third to one half of my
salary goes to the government already, and it seems
unethical to take more of it away from me simply because
I have it and someone else does not. I do work to earn it,
after all, and it seems I should have some benefit from it.
But I digress.

The main reason that I object to Kozol’s plan is that

pumping money into the education system simply does
not work. “The crisis in American education persists
despite decades of increasing federal intervention and
taxpayer funding” (Lips). The failures of American
education cause well-meaning individuals to urge policy-
makers to send more money to schools. After all, ‘our kids
are worth it.’ But there is a flaw in this reasoning:
spending more money doesn’t fix the problem. “Inflation-
adjusted federal spending per pupil has tripled since 1970”
(Kids Deserve Better). Combined with this is the fact that
American “academic achievement nationally has flatlined,
and graduation rates are no better today than they were in 1970” (Kids Deserve Better). More money
isn’t the answer, and Robin Hood plans simply increase administration and the resultant overhead,
increase the unconstitutional involvement of federal government in education, and reduce the system’s
accountability to parents and students.

The school choice/school voucher program is the best option that I can see for improving the school
system. It will improve schools, offer better choices to parents and students, and naturally desegregate
classroom populations. Kozol has a lot of concern for children’s choices and opportunities. “Kids have
no choice about where they’re born or where they live,” he quotes in one passage (Kozol 198). How
wonderful, then, if they should have the choice of where they go to school.

It should be noted that any education reform should be reviewed regularly and revised where
necessary. Statistics like graduation rates, test scores, and failure rates should be regularly analyzed for
every school and district. A sweeping education reform of this nature would be bound to create some
chaos until the new system was in full swing. Each state’s department of education would have to
review every school’s progress regularly and be prepared to recommend adjustments. Kozol is right in
saying that conditions in poor minority schools, if they do indeed exist today as they did twenty years
ago when the book was published, cannot be allowed to continue in such abominable conditions.
Perhaps when more choice is included in the system, such conditions will be more easily recognized and
resolved.
 Works Cited

"Kids Deserve Better." Conservative Policy Research and Analysis. The Heritage Foundation, 28 July

2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2010. <http://www.heritage.org/Research/Factsheets/Kids-Deserve-

Better>.

Lips, Dan, and Jennifer Marshall. "Transforming and Improving American Education." The Heritage

Foundation. 9 Dec. 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2008/12/Transforming-and-Improving-American-

Education-A-Memo-to-President-elect-Obama>.

"Mapping out the National Assessment of Title I: The Interim Report." U.S. Department of Education.

Web. 28 Nov. 2010. <http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAssess/index.html>.

Merrifield, John D. "Education Vouchers Benefit Edgewood Students." NCPA.org. National Center for

Policy Analysis | NCPA, 25 Mar. 2010. Web. 2 Dec. 2010.

Montogmery, Dave. "Poorest School Districts Get Least-qualified Teachers; Affluent Districts Get the

Best, Survey F..." Star-Telegram.com. Web. 02 Dec. 2010. <http://www.star-

telegram.com/2010/10/18/2556603/poorest-school-districts-get-least.html>.

Richwine, Jason. "School Choice: What Parents Want." The Foundry. The Heritage Foundation, 05 May

2010. Web. 03 Dec. 2010. <http://blog.heritage.org/?p=32862>.

United States. U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences. Evaluation of the DC

Opportunity Scholarship Program. By Patrick Wolf. U.S. Department of Education, June 2010.

Web. 2 Dec. 2010. <http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104018/pdf/20104018.pdf>.