African Americans, Hispanics stuck in public schools worse than in '60s
By Janet E. Sawyer
Special to Inside
National and local experts on education say that funding inequities in Chicago Public Schools reinforce racial segregation. As a result, the majority of the city's African American and Hispanic students are trapped in academically underperforming schools in impoverished neighborhoods. (How did this situation originate? A future issue of Inside will review what Elizabeth Taylor wrote in "American Pharaoh" about what she considers the deliberate schemes of former Mayor Richard J. Daley.)
Educator and activist Jonathan Kozol's recent book, "The Shame of a Nation," includes Chicago in a nationwide analysis of school funding and racial segregation. "Two tenths of one percentage point now mark the difference between legally enforced apartheid in the South years ago and socially and economically enforced apartheid in these northern cities now," said Kozol in a lecture during the recent Chicago Humanities Festival. The author spoke in November to sold-out crowds at First Methodist Church downtown and at Rockefeller Chapel in Hyde Park during a nationwide book tour.
According to Kozol's book, CPS spent an average of $8,482 per child to educate its children, the overwhelming majority of whom are African American and Hispanic. Kozol's data is based on figures from 2002-2003. According to CPS' most recent data, in 2004 per pupil spending in some schools is half that amount, as low as about $4,000. Kozol's figures rank Chicago at the bottom of spending compared with suburban districts with overwhelming majorities of white children. According to Kozol, the Highland Park-Deerfield school district spent the most on public education and more than double the CPS average.
Kozol spent five years researching urban school districts relative to suburban school districts, including Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee in the Midwest. "The political choices not to fund the schools equitably by the very same people who live in wealthy, all white neighborhoods, is a more urgent issue in light of the current politics of No Child Left Behind," he told Inside.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires schools to perform on standardized tests or risk closure. Sharon Damore, an Assistant Professor of Education at DePaul University who has been a consultant to public and charter schools, said that NCLB disadvantages schools in terms of funding equity.
One such school is Medill Elementary, on the West Side, with which Damore worked.
According to published reports in 2004, Medill is slated for closure or restructuring as stipulated by the No Child Left Behind Act based on continued failure on standardized assessments. According to CPS statistics on the school, in 2004 only 15 percent of students passed standardized tests. Medill's students are 100 percent African American and 99 percent low income.
"I am very concerned about funding because the money goes to test prep," said Damore. "I think for that school to be held accountable is absolutely crazy. It's difficult for these kids to break out of generational poverty."
Kozol said that poverty and the resulting segregation in Chicago neighborhood schools is largely unnoticed by average citizens and underreported by the media. "I find that thousands of Americans are largely unaware," Kozol told Inside. "If you haven't heard about things in a while it must mean things are getting better—but in fact it's getting worse."
Kozol said that media attention in the wake of Hurricane Katrina exposed the public to the plight of African Americans in poverty in urban areas. "The Shame of a Nation" was released on Sept. 13, about two weeks after the governor of Louisiana declared a state of emergency due to Hurricane Katrina. As recently as last month, the book ranked #12 on the New York Times best seller list.
"It took an act of God to get people to wake up and realize what a lot of us have been saying for years. There is a lot of anger and upset about the return to segregation in America," Kozol said. "Just decent, regular people are ashamed and upset. This is an upsetting book, it's not a fun book to read—and yet it ended up as number 12 on the bestseller list. There's this book that indicts America for ripping apart the legacy of Dr. King. There is a lot more moral indignation than the media would like us to believe."
Activist Bill Ayers, a University of Illinois at Chicago Professor of Education, has been acquainted with Kozol since the 1960s and introduced Kozol at his Rockefeller Chapel lecture. He said that he agrees with Kozol. "The biggest change is we refuse to talk about it any more. What Kozol says has the ring of authenticity of truth to it," Ayers told Inside.
According to Ayers, the worsening conditions of racial segregation in Chicago Public Schools corresponds with "white flight," or the move of large numbers of affluent whites from Chicago to the suburbs. "You will of course have the Lake Forests and those schools and then you have Chicago. You have two school systems sitting side by side," Ayers said. "Money buys all kinds of resources. Chicago kids need more access and they get less on every measure."
Ayers said that education spending is less in poor communities because school funding in Illinois is based on property taxes, not state funding. As such, districts with higher property tax bases tend to spend more on public education. According to the Illinois Department of Revenue, the majority of property tax assessments fund public education. Illinois ranks near the bottom of state contributions to public school funding at 40th out of 50 states, according to recent published reports.
Kozol spoke about the need for communities to address the issues of school funding and racial segregation raised in "The Shame of a Nation." "I think we're at a crossroads now. We're going to have to force ourselves to make some tough decisions. Are we going to 'token honor' Dr. King and then dismantle everything that we stood for?" he said. "If it doesn't happen we're going to end up pretty soon with populations divided by race and caste that don't communicate with one another, and that is unacceptable in a democracy." |
