TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/101491/1014120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.7 KB | 179 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 60

Do the Poor Deserve Bad Schools?


Of course not. Equal opportunity is what America is all about.
That is why there is growing criticism of the shameful
disparities in funding.

By EMILY MITCHELL -- Reported by Deborah Fowler/Houston and Lisa
H. Towle/New York


    Before starting their morning lessons, children in public
schools across the U.S. recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The
familiar words echo in immaculate suburban buildings with
bright, airy classrooms and labs where children study art and
languages, learn on the latest computers and play sports in
well-equipped gyms. They also ring out in overcrowded, eroding,
inner-city schools where sewage backs up into bathroom plumbing
and where students share used textbooks and practice typing on
handmade, fake keyboards. Whatever the setting, the pledge ends
the same: "with liberty and justice for all."

    The notion of equal opportunity is central to the American
ideal. For that goal to have any meaning, it must be rooted in
an education system that gives every child a chance to succeed.
But for decades, a gulf has been widening between the quality
of public schooling for children of privilege and that for those
born in poverty. By relying on local property taxes as a crucial
source of funds, the U.S. has created a caste system of public
education that is increasingly separate and unequal.

    As these disparities have become too glaring and shameful
to ignore, a reform movement has grown that seeks to play Robin
Hood by taking funds from richer districts to help pay for
schools in poorer ones. Since the 1970s, 10 states have decided
-- or been forced by courts -- to overhaul their methods of
funding some of their school districts. In the process, tempers
are flaring in a manner reminiscent of the disagreements that
once raged over school busing. "It is a tug-of-war between
equity and excellence," says Tony Rollins, executive director
of the Colorado Education Association, a state teachers' union
that has been active in the funding wars.

    The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful
voice: that of education gadfly Jonathan Kozol, author of a
galvanizing new book, Savage Inequalities (Crown; $20). After
two years of research, Kozol has written a searing expose of the
extremes of wealth and poverty in America's school system and
the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in
cities. In public schooling, he argues, social policy during the
Reagan-Bush era "has been turned back almost 100 years."

    From San Antonio to New York City's South Bronx, Kozol
observes, inner-city schools are bleak fortresses with rotting
classrooms and few amenities to inspire or motivate the young.
A history teacher at East St. Louis' Martin Luther King Jr. High
School, he notes, has 110 students in four classes, and only 26
books. Every year, says a teacher in a nearby school, "there's
one more toilet that doesn't flush, one more drinking fountain
that doesn't work, one more classroom without texts."

    In painful detail, Kozol describes such inner-city schools
as Morris High in the South Bronx, where water cascades down
the stairways when it rains, and Chicago's Du Sable High, where
the chemistry teacher uses a popcorn popper as a Bunsen burner.
Kozol juxtaposes these images with descriptions of the
luxurious facilities in nearby wealthy suburbs like Winnetka,
north of Chicago. Its New Trier High has, among other things,
seven gyms, rooms for fencing, wrestling and dance instruction,
and an Olympic-size pool.

    The trade journal Publishers Weekly took the unprecedented
step of running an open letter to President Bush on its Sept.
27 cover urging him to read Savage Inequalities. "It is," reads
the letter, "the story of how, in our public schools, we are
creating a country profoundly different from the one our
founders envisaged."

    For Kozol and many activist reformers, the chief villain
of the education tragedy is "local control," America's
decentralized system of school administration and its heavy
reliance on property taxation. Everything from pencils to
teachers' salaries is paid for through a patchwork process that
varies from state to state. But in most cases, about 6% of the
money in any district comes from Washington, 47% from the state
government and 47% from locally generated property taxes. Kozol
believes the best way to improve schools -- all schools -- would
be to do away completely with the property tax as a source of
revenue. In its place he suggests a progressive income tax to
raise money that would then be distributed fairly among
districts.

    There is no denying the key role that property levies have
played in creating the vast educational gap between rich and
poor. School trustees in the affluent Texas district of Glen
Rose, for example, annually dole out $9,326 per pupil -- three
times as much as the per-student allocation in the Rio Grande
Valley's bleak Roma district. For reformers, the chief ally has
been state courts, which have ruled in many cases -- Kentucky,
Texas, New Jersey and Montana, for example -- that inequalities
are unconstitutional. In Tennessee, 77 school districts asked
a state court to take the same approach, and won. A similar
suit has been launched by 108 of Michigan's 500 school
districts.

    The reform movement is already producing some results. In
1989 Kentucky's supreme court ruled that the state's
school-finance system was unconstitutional; the richest schools
were allocated as much as $4,200 a year for each pupil, while
poorer ones received only $1,700 per student. Under a plan that
is in its second year, virtually every school district now has
at least $3,200 to spend per student; over the years, the gap
between rich and poor districts will be further narrowed.
Children from low-income families now have new preschool
programs, and there is a wide range of Saturday and after-school
proj ects for students with special needs.

    But in other parts of the country the fight over
redistributing privilege remains bitter. Texas' state supreme
court ruled in 1989 that gross educational inequality could no
longer be condoned. Since then Texas lawmakers have come up with
two plans that the judiciary found unsatisfactory. Governor Ann
Richards signed a compromise law last year that shifted millions
of dollars in property-tax revenue to poorer districts, but the
bill's constitutionality is still under challenge in the courts.

    In New Jersey, Democratic Governor James Florio did some
fast backpedaling after prompting the state legislature to
enact a Robin Hood plan last year that would have used $1.1
billion in state taxes to raise the level of funding in poor
school districts. When affluent voters expressed outrage, Florio
agreed to shift $360 million of the school aid back to
property-tax relief. His political standing was badly damaged;
at board of education meetings in Florham Park, N.J., angry
parents showed up seeking to turn their public school district
into a private one.

    It is easy enough to condemn those self-protective actions
as selfishness, but as author Kozol points out, in most cases
better-off Americans simply have a narrower view of what they
are doing. "They do not want poor children to be harmed," he
writes, "they simply want the best for their own children."
Those sentiments are echoed by New Jersey school-district
superintendent Timothy Brennan, whose Holmdel district spends
$7,450 per pupil, vs. $3,086 in the state's poorest
jurisdiction. "The point of reform was to make all schools
quality schools. But I fear that everything will settle into
mediocrity." The belief even extends to children. Kozol spoke
to a student in a wealthy New York City suburb whose family had
moved from the problem-plagued Bronx. "There's no point in
coming to a place like this, where schools are good," she said,
"and then your taxes go back to the place where you began."

    Yet anyone who has seen the shameful disparities between
public schools in rich and poor areas, or who has read Kozol's
vivid account, will find it difficult to deny that the
differences in funding make a mockery of the nation's ideal.
Fifth-grade teacher Madelyn Cimaglia has no doubt of the wonders
that could be worked in San Antonio's Edgewood school district
if more funds were available. Like thousands of her peers,
Cimaglia supplements meager classroom supplies with her own
money, buying her students books such as Alice in Wonderland and
Charlotte's Web. "Our kids would fly if we had resources similar
to the rich districts," she says.