jonathan kozol on education & no child left behind
DS: You also suggest that our current system of locally financed schools be abolished, claiming that it perpetuates inequality by allowing suburbs like Scarsdale or Manhasset to spend twice as much on each student as less affluent cities do.
JK: Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco.
DS: Isn’t that why President Bush enacted No Child Left Behind, to narrow the achievement gap between white students and minorities?
JK: I would hesitate to try to navigate the thought processes of that sophisticated, well-educated product of Andover.
DS: Seriously, why would Republicans, who have traditionally opposed big government, encumber schools with the testing requirements attached to No Child Left Behind?
JK: The kind of testing we are doing today is sociopathic in its repetitive and punitive nature. Its driving motive is to highlight failure in inner-city schools as dramatically as possible in order to create a ground swell of support for private vouchers or other privatizing schemes.
— “School Monitor: Questions for Jonathan Kozol”. Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON. NYT Magazine, 2005 Sept. 4.
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October 4th, 2005 at 3:31 pm
dear jonathan,i have been a follower and reader of your booksfor 30 years,i hear you speak whenever you are in my neck of the woods,recently at 1st babtist church in portland. the changes taking place in portland public schools is frightening and alarming.i teach kindergarten and after only 12 days of school these 5 year olds were tested and the word risk was attached to all 26 kids. sick and oup administrators seem to buy it hook line and sinker,scary. what can we do to affect real change?