The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America » (Reprint)

Jonathan Kozol is the National Book Award–winning author of Death at an Early Age, Rachel and Her Children, Savage Inequalities, and Amazing Grace. He has been working with children in inner-city schools for more than 40 years.

The author of Savage Inequalities argues that US schools are now more segregated than when the Supreme Court made its landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling (1954). This veteran activist researcher traces the roots of the problem, faults efficiency models such as the No Child Left Behind Act, and supports a constitutional amendment making education a fundamental right. This provocative treatment finds a glimmer of hope in a district's rejection of quick-fix remedial programs. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The New York Times - Nathan Glazer

Kozol argues - as many educators do - that the increasing emphasis on testing, with the resultant pressures on children, teachers and principals, and the drastic effects that failure in these tests can have for a school and its staff (there is a reason they are called "high-stakes" tests) have badly thinned out education in schools for the poor and minorities. He offers good evidence of this. By devoting more and more time to test preparation, schools are neglecting other subjects - history and social science, geography, music and art - that are not part of the "high-stakes" tests. Kozol wants education to be richer than simple competence in reading and mathematics, and he would consider it a narrowing of the aims of education to use these test results to argue for the educational benefits of integration.