Talk:The Shame of the Nation

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[edit] It reads like an advertisement?

Can someone explain this? --and of course the article "needs to be expanded" it's just a stub. futurebird (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Kozol has his point of view, but it obscures some of what is going on. The critical segregation is becoming by class/economics, not race. Race is involved, but economics is perhaps moreso. Wealthier African Americans, Asians and Latinos have moved to the suburbs themselves. Many new Asian and African immigrants are wealthy and educated enough to go straight to the suburbs and never stop in the inner city. In Prince Georges County, MD, which is now majority African American, people are probably less worried about schools that are heavily black, as many/most of the students' parents are middle and upper class. This is an evolving issue that is linked to the widening income gaps in American society. There may be as many segregated schools as in 1968, but they are of a different character, and represent more stark economic divisions among people.

Some groups are challenging the system of funding schools from local property taxes, a holdover from early government structure, which permits the drastic differences in funding. In the last several years, there have been court challenges in states like New Jersey and New Hampshire (the latter does not have substantial racial minorities, but real disparities between wealthy and poor localities/school districts) against the local property tax funding system for school districts. These have been the basis for school funding - and the reason for inequities such as the numbers reported by Kozol. The states came up with new methods to try to reallocate state tax funds to approach comparability/equalize spending from one school district to another. (I'm vague on the :details but may be able to find more data.)

In a related aspect, some school systems (can't remember which - Minneapolis or Boston?) are beginning to use economic and family capacity data to better identify students in need of help and support affirmative action. (The Supreme Court last year determined against Seattle's and ?'s affirmative action plans because they were based mostly on racial classification, but held that consideration of more factors in assigning students could potentially pass constitutional review.)

So it's one thing to write an article about Kozol's book and thesis, but maybe that's not the best expression of the contemporary problem. Another factor has been the increasing suburbanization of the country, especially for all middle and upper class families with children. They mostly go to the suburbs to rear their children. Even cities that had quite mixed populations 25 years ago, like Seattle and Portland, today have fewer middle class families with children, but more older and younger childless people as residents, and more poor minority families with children in the city schools. --Parkwells (talk) 15:55, 29 December 2007 (UTC)