Argument:
In "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid" Jonathan Kozol argues that today's schools are still segregated. Throughout the article Kozol gives examples of the various schools he has visited that consider themselves diverse but fewer than three percent of those schools' populations are white. The schools with the high percentages of black and Hispanic children cannot provide the resources necessary for thier students to recieve a quality education. Several of these schools are in need of repairs, they spend thousands of dollars less per student than schools in predominatley white suburbs, and thier teachers are underpaid. It is such a disservice to the children of these schools to be deprived of such services but at the same time are expected to perform well on state tests. As Kozol states; "There is something deeply hypocritical about a society that holds an eight-year-old inner-city child "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave thier own kids six or seven years earlier."
I agree with the quote about it being unreasonalbe to hold young children accountable for exam performance. In Providence, NCLB requires us to identify students who are performing "below grade level" and notify their parents as early as November of their kindergarten year. Often these are students who have never been in a school setting before but have a firm grasp of two languages. They are bright and their parents know it hawever they are getting form letter telling them that their children are already failing when they have just started.It's a tough message to give parents and doesn't promote positive feelings towards the school.
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