Kozol addresses the fact that schools that are doing poorly is because they are underfunded. The reason for them being underfunded is because of the demographics and the neighborhood of the particular school. He talks about how district 10 in the Bronx is basically broken up into two districts because the northwestern part fosters many elite and sophisticated families and consists of very few low-income families as opposed the southern part, where they are many nonwhites. It is pretty obvious that the northern part of the district 10 is doing a lot better than the southern part. The government even favors the district that is doing better because when it comes to a distribution of electronics, the northern region gets more supplies. This is not only evident in the Bronx, but everywhere they are schools. People give more praise to those that are doing better, and the reason they do better is because they are more than well-equipped to learn and to participate in school activities. Under-performing school are below standards because it is quite obvious that they under-funded. Without proper facilities, money, and support, these school will never get up to par with the better schools. And with the failing economy, the government wants to get rid of under-performing schools, which leads to bigger class sizes and less attention to the students. When students get less attention, they will not learn as well, no matter how well they are being funded. It is easier for a class of 20 to learn the same material than it would for a class of 35. There will be too much going on for the students as well as the staff. So closing down schools is obviously not the answer. Parents are upset because their children do not have a school that belongs to them anymore. Big schools are being sectioned off into elementary, middle, and even high schools. . . so basically three schools in one building– that does not seem like a perfect environment to foster any kind of learning and progression.
Another thing I found interesting was how government officials think that school are under-performing because those schools have bad teachers. The superintendent believes that in order to help schools in the southern part of the Bronx, they would have to improve thee quality of teachers in poor schools. This does not make any sense to me because if the same teacher were put in a better school, her students would do better than those in the bad school. It is very unfair to the teachers who get put into bad schools because they seem to be the only people the community blames. Why are the children not doing well in school? Why are they failing? People will automatically assume that it is because the teacher is inexperienced, using the wrong teaching methods, and is inadequate. Both students and teachers need to be well funded in order for progress to happen. If a teacher from northern Bronx were to be put in a bad neighborhood, does that mean that the children will automatically get better grades? No. A lot of pressure is put on teachers because they are the ones who are around the students all the time and have the most interaction. It is not fair to say a teacher is good because her students get good grades and to say a teacher is bad if her students get bad grades. There are so many factors that need to be considered but are overlooked.
There are so many obvious inequalities which led to the government trying to step in and help. How big of an impact do you think they will have on the future education system? Will it be possible to end inequality at all?
