About this title: A searing, eye-opening expose of the inequality built into America's public education system, written by the National Book Award-winning author of Death at an Early Age and Rachel and Her Children. Kozol blames the disparity among public school systems on the local funding structure that ensures a direct connection between affluence of a community and the quality of its children's education. (Education)
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780060974992ISBN:0060974990
Description: Good. First Edition. Moderate cover wear with scuffing to edges and creasing. Minor markings on pages. Age toning. GoodwillnyBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service. You may return new items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Fine. Almost in new condition. Book shows only very slight signs of use. Cover and binding are undamaged and pages show minimal use. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. May have wear or tear to spine, edges and or cover. Creases in spine. Bent/rounded corners. May have highlighting/notes. read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges and creases. read more
Description: Very Good. 0060974990 Copy has been read but remains in very good condition. Pages are intact. High-lighting to some of the pages. Spine is tight; a clean read. HAS REMAINDER MARK. read more
"As noted elsewhere, this is a book that bears witness rather than a book than proposes changes. Kozol has said publicly that he no longer believes that there is the will to change this problem (i.e., inequality in schools), and witness is all that he can do. I read a review (in the New Republic, I think) that asks why the reader should go to the trouble of being "whipped with the wet noodle of Kozol's sanctimoniousness" (or something like that), and it's a legitimate question. The answer: bearing witness is the least we can do."
"Kozol's writing smolders with fury, and this book imparts this fury onto the reader. If you read this and you are not moved to action, then it has not served its purpose. He relentlessly lays bare the reality of segregation and inequity in America's public education system, and this is a problem that has not lessened in scope nor intensity almost a decade after this was published. The fact is that even the most liberal minded people conveniently overlook reality when they move somewhere (or pull some strings to get their kids into somewhere) 'nice' in order to send their kids to a 'good' school.
The policies that we enact, the budgetary outlays, and the legal decisions that we make have immediate and powerful impact that cannot be understated. This book serves as a stark reminder of what happens to children when the complacency of the rich overrules reality."
"This book is an intimate investigation into the poorest schools in the United States. Published in 1991, the book is a bit dated and hasn't aged too well but effectively communicates a still-relevant message: for many children in the US, education is a joke. The tax system that provides public schools with the bulk of their funding is skewed sharply towards more affluent neighborhoods where wealthy families have much louder, powerful voices.
Author Jonathan Kozol walks within some schools from the poorest neighborhoods in East St. Louis, Chicago, San Antonio and Camden, New Jersey, telling similar stories in each chapter. He takes us through buildings with holes in the ceilings, shows us their broken or nonexistent utilities, teachers whose patience has worn thin, children whose health has deteriorated from exposure to toxic substances in the household, and an institutionalized apathy that prevents tangible solutions from emerging.
It's a very depressing outlook for these demographics. Kozol mentions a "simple" solution that is shot down time and time again (and still holds relevance today), is to reform the tax system to accommodate for a more equitable distribution of funds to help kids in less fortunate schools. However, the largest road block they face is the idea that for the wealthier, equity is synonymous with dispossession. Rather than lift the poor to a higher level, families in glamorous neighborhoods like Winnetka see it as bringing their own kids down.
By no means a light read, it definitely paints a clear picture of a broken system in dire need of reform."
"This is an important book. It does a great job of giving a detailed descripitio of the spectrum of school quality in our country. Of course it is disheartening to see the inequality and the lack of leadership in poor urban schools, but what is even more disturbing is the limited change that has occurred since the book was published in 1991. The one problem with the book (and it's a big one) is that Kozol spends the whole time showing the funding disparaties between poor and rich school districts (suburban school x is 5 miles from urban school y and gets 8 times more funding per student, etc.), and then describes the test scores and school conditions of those districts. But it's been pretty clearly shown that throwing lots more money at poor schools is not a sufficient answer. Maybe that research wasn't available or convincing when Kozol wrote the book -- in fact, maybe his book was part of the reason why some poor school districts have been allocated a lot more money per student in an attempt to equalize opportunity, an outcome which then led to research showing that more money alone didn't help. But knowing that money alone isn't the answer, I wish Kozol had paid less attention to making the same point about funding discrepancies and more attention to what he does refer to but never identifies as the key constraint: good teachers and principals. I guess the problem here is that Kozol sees those contsraints as a direct outcome of limited funding -- but there's a lot more nuance there: more money doesn't necessarily (or even often) mean good teachers and principals."
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