Chapter 14 really focused on trying to summarize everything that we have previously discussed. Yet it left a lot of things unanswered.
On the topic of racial segregation, while there is no longer de jure segregation, a lot of de facto segregation still exists in the public school system since children are zoned to their schools by where they live. I looked up the student ethnicity rate of the high school I went to, a public high school in one of the five boroughs and found that out of over three thousand students 82% were white and only 2% were Hispanic. The high school also has a graduation rate that is 30% higher than the NYC public school graduation rate. While I am not saying that this has to do with the makeup of the students, but the fact that the school is so racially segregated shows some the of the racial disparities of nyc public school systems.
The chapter also spoke about ESL and Bilingual education; this is something that is still a struggle and a problem in the public school system. I have friends who came out of ESL excellent English language speakers because they came to the states at a young age and other friends who remember ESL as one of the worst times of their lives and think it made school and learning the language very difficult. I wonder if there is any way to aid the process of learning the language for students without just thrusting them into ESL programs and if the extra money should be spent on bilingual education (which many schools have cut since it is expensive and personal)?
