Kozol: Introduction - Chapter 6

5. Kozol writes about the issue of segregation in urban and suburban schools. The author touches on the problem of inadequate funding to certain schools, and explains that schools with less funding are more likely to do poorly on standardized testing because of lack of resources. Also, another cause of low test scores is because the crucial subjects that are on these standardized tests are not being taught in certain schools. Kozol mentions that teachers in many urban schools are told to follow pre-planned lessons so that there is a commonality in the learning environment which does not always help students reach their full potential. Not building a personal relationship with students is the wrong way to teach them.


4. Pg. 18 – “Many Americans I meet who live far from our major cities and who have no first0hand knowledge of realities in urban public schools seem to have a rather vague and general impression that the great extremes of racial isolation they recall as matters of grave national significance some 35 or 40 years ago have gradually, but steadily, diminished in more recent years.”

Pg. 64 – “Although generically described as ‘school reform,’ most of these practices and policies are targeted primarily at poor children of color and although most educators speak of the agendas in broad language that sounds applicable to all, it is understood that they are valued chiefly as responses to perceived catastrophe in deeply segregated and unequal schools.”

Pg. 108 – “Other principals have said things like this to me, tentatively, not generally in school, more often in an evening’s conversation. It is as if they’re looking back at an ideal of education that they valued deeply when they started out in their careers, and value still, but feel they have to set aside in order to respond to the realities before them in the neighborhoods that serve and to deliver those empirical results that are demanded of them. These things are said almost nostalgically.”

Pg. 112 – “Most Americans whose children aren’t in public school have little sense of the inordinate authority that now is granted to these standardized exams and, especially within the inner-city schools, the time the tests subtract from actual instruction.”


3. Urban neighborhoods (pg. 100) – residential communities in the city

High-stakes tests (pg. 53) – determine whether students can or cannot be promoted after taking these tests in third grade

Schools in suburban districts (pg. 125) – made up of classrooms with no more than 18 students in each class, resulting in more one on one time with student and teacher


2.Throughout my senior year of high school I interned in a low-income, title 1 elementary school. I saw that these children needed attention that they did not always receive from their parents or guardians at home. With instability in their home lives, the last thing these students would need is a cold, impersonal teacher. At this school, all of the teachers were genuinely concerned with the well-being of each student which made the students happy to be at school.

I also interned at a junior high which had students who were predominantly Hispanic. I assisted in a classroom with eighth grade students who did poorly on their Math TAKS exam. I saw that with patience and building a connection with the students, they were more willing to listen and learn instead of blocking everything out if the material was just forced on them.

1. How can money be allocated so that inner city schools can properly educate their students for standardized testing with adequate and efficient resources?

Pros & Cons in Education Today

In a lot of schools across Texas, the extreme importance given to standardized testing is unnecessary. I do not think that it is helping students reach their potential at all! On the other hand, in education today, most schools give students the opportunity to enroll in upper level classes that give each student the chance to expand their knowledge in any subject.