Poor Kids in Crumbling Schools: That's the Problem, But What's the Solution?

Most people know that some of our schools are poorly equipped and housed in run-down buildings, but few even imagine the conditions Jonathan Kozol describes in Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (New York: Crown, 1991). Kozol visited schools in a number of cities, and he's appalled by the conditions in which many poor children go to school. He is also appalled by the contrast between these wretched places and the lavishly equipped suburban schools that are often only a few minutes' drive away. He asks why we don't have any sense of "moral urgency" about this terrible injustice.

The schools Kozol visited were filthy and decrepit. Imagine a high school that had to be closed twice in one year because the toilets overflowed. Or one where a stairwell became a waterfall when it rained, and the dust from crumbing plaster turned students' hair white.

Many of the schools were incredibly crowded. One elementary school was a converted skating rink. Its "capacity" was 900 kids, but 1300 were going to school there in windowless rooms. And many schools didn't have the most basic equipment - like enough books. A history teacher with 110 students had 26 textbooks, some of which had the first 100 pages missing. In some schools, teachers brought their own paper supplies; in others, kids had no toilet paper.

But what rally arouses Kozol's indignation is that these schools are not in some poor developing nation. They're in the United States, some times only a few miles from schools where other kids broadcast from their own television stations and swim in Olympic-sized pools. Kozol finds the injustice of this especially galling because the U.S. prides itself on offering equality of opportunity. And galling because most of the kids in these poor schools are African-American or Hispanic. It's like a return to the days before Brown v. Board of Education overturned the principle of separate but equal schools. Or maybe it's worse because no one even pretends these schools are equal.

Kozol' s denunciation of the conditions in which many poor children go to school will make a lot of people feel guilty -- as it's meant to. It should also make them think about how to change these conditions. But they should know that there are no easy solutions. 

Kozol comes out for equalization -- spending the same amount of money (if not more) on schools in poor neighborhoods as in wealthy ones. Since wealthy neighborhoods can raise much more in property taxes, he suggests a Robin Hood solution: Take from the rich and give to the poor. This is simple justice, but it may have some undesirable consequences.

In countries that have always had national systems, schools have always been funded equally. Our tradition of local schools supported by local taxes has created a different set of expectations. People  are used to describing how much they want to spend on their schools. And they look on spending money for schools outside their district as something like foreign aid.

Furthermore, if school funding is equalized on a state level, it won't be possible to bring all schools up to the level of the best-funded schools. Some kids will get less than they had before. And parents who are used to paying for what they want -- and getting what they pay for -- may be angry enough to join a tax revolt or withdraw their kids and their support from public schools.

Even if every state equalized education spending, we still wouldn't have total fairness because some states spend more on education than others. The logic of equalization would point to federal regulation of education spending, but this, too would run up against our tradition of Washington. You can call these historically ingrained feelings selfish; that doesn't make them go away. And you ignore them at your peril.

That's the lesson of equalization in California. As Kozol admits, backlash against equalization there was responsible for proposition 13, which capped most property taxes and led to the decline of public education in New Jersey, where a Republican legislature has been elected expressly to roll back the taxes that were supposed to equalize school spending. It's not enough to do what's right; you also have to ask what the consequences will be. In New Jersey, the consequences are that Florida's program for equalization may be wiped out. And nobody is likely to try anything similar for a long time to come.

This doesn't mean that, because we can't create absolute equality, we can't do anything. Old people in this country used to die because they couldn't afford to see a doctor or even buy enough to eat. Now we have policies that provide them with medical care and income maintenance. We don't have absolute equality, but we've greatly improved the situation.

We could do that for schools too. We could set minimum state standards to make sure that no child ever had to go to schools like the ones Kozol describes. And we could enforce those standards. Marxists always said that American social legislation offered more bandaids instead of the revolutionary changes that were needed. But when they tried to put their revolutionary changes into action, they fell on their faces. You can call the things we can do for kids in impoverished schools "mere bandaids," but they will make a difference.