Who is responsible?

In this weeks kozol reading he discuss of how two schools are run-ed in a managerial aspect. In class we determine three reasons why school chose this method. First is to teach children at young age of basic skills and knowledge to work managerial positions, its a guarantee of labor source for big corporations. The second is that teacher and and other professional perceive that working class student are not smart enough, too lazy or do not want to set their children up to failure by encouraging them set goals too high. I don't think that educator's should take the liberty to set realistic dreams or goals for their students, simply encourage the to be the best they can be. After watching the video clip of Oprah's show trading places, I thought about that hopefully Oprah is able to help this school out. Oprah and many wealthy people have the financial resources to improve the quality of education. Wealthy people ignored these issues simply because their children education is not affected by these inequalities. Addressing the needs or problems of one school is not enough because there's million of other school across the United States with the same problem. Who can we hold responsible? We have talked about the influence of such factors as race, ethnicity, social economic status, parents involvement, teacher attitudes and etc. We know that the problems consist of lack of resources, funding and poor quality or inadequate curriculum. However, who should be responsible for these problems, I think it should start with the government. The government needs re- think of methods in which they determine or allocate funding and resources, a set curriculum, re-evaluate teachers training. In addition there should be a set of regulations in which the conditions of all public schools should be assessed. The government would have more direct involve in education to guarantee equal access and quality of education to all children.

race a factor in inequality

In this weeks class we discuss unequal resources in education. As much as we all would love to find a solution to this problem it seems impossible. We agree that first step is acknowledging that these inequalities exist. However, throughout our discussion of inequality in resources in education race was never openly mention only inferred. As we share our different experiences in school, relationship with teachers, community parents involvement, environment and etc, which went according to the different races.
Many of us have been taught that through hard work, dedication we can achieve anything but for people of color or minorities they must work harder to fight against discrimination and stereotype. For those who are able to survive through unequal quality, resources and conditions in the education system, will always continue to suffer or be affected by these inequalities.
The idea of White as pure, privileged or superior and everything else is superior has been in placed and practice for so many years. The difference between now and then is that racism, segregation and discrimination is illegal continues to exists. Regardless of anything and all efforts race is still and will always be the reason behind inequalities. These following clips may not be about unequal resources but of how racial differences or race continues to be an issue
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3425640
and
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3401196

Have things really Change

Report: Segregation in U.S. Schools is Increasing
By Matthew BiggReutersWednesday, August 29, 2007; 8:42 PM
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June, according to report published Wednesday.
The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.
Many segregated schools struggle to attract highly qualified teachers and administrators, do not prepare students well for college and fail to graduate more than half their students.
In its June ruling the Supreme Court forbade most existing voluntary local efforts to integrate schools in a decision favored by the Bush administration despite warnings from academics that it would compound educational inequality.
"It is about as dramatic a reversal in the stance of the federal courts as one could imagine," said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor and a co-author of the report.
"The federal courts are clearly pushing us backward segregation with the encouragement of the Justice Department of President George W. Bush," he said in an interview.
The United States risks becoming a nation in which a new majority of non-white young people will attend "separate and inferior" schools, the report said.
"Resegregation ... is continuing to grow in all parts of the country for both African Americans and Latinos and is accelerating the most rapidly in the only region that had been highly desegregated -- the South," it said.
The trend damages the prospects for non-white students and will likely have a negative effect on the U.S. economy, according to the report by one of the leading U.S. research centers on issues of civil rights and racial inequality.
Part of the reason for the resegregation is the rapidly expanding number of black and Latino children and a corresponding fall in the number of white children, it said.
Contrary to popular belief, the surge in the number of minority children in public schools was not mainly caused by a flight of white students into private schools.
Instead, it said, the post-"baby boom" generation of white Americans are having smaller family sizes.
"During the desegregation period there was a major decline in the education gap between blacks and whites and an increase in college entry by blacks .... That gap has stopped closing," Orfield said.
TRIPLE SEGREGATION FOR LATINOS
The record of successive administration reforms such as the Goals 2000 project of former President Bill Clinton and Bush's "No Child Left Behind" in 2001 "justifies deep skepticism," the report said.
Those changes focused pressure and resources on making the achievement of minority children in segregated schools equal to children in schools that were fully integrated.
School desegregation is a sensitive issue in the United States because of resistance to it from white leaders in the decade after a 1954 Supreme Court decision saying segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
One of the chief complaints of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s was that black-only public schools were inevitably starved of resources by local government with the result that black children received inferior education.
Latinos are the fastest growing minority in U.S. schools and for them segregation is often more profound than it was when the phenomenon was first measured 40 years ago, according to the report, "Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation and the need for new Integration Strategies."
"Too often Latino students face triple segregation by race, class and language," it said.

Have Things really Change?
I hope you like this article, as much as I did. Even though it seems that times have change, but can see to what degree. Declaring segregation of schools unconstitutional was necessary, however i believe that it should have been approached differently. Nothing was done to address the conditions of schools of schools that already existed within these segregated communities. If the necessary reforms were made years ago maybe these repetitive patterns of segregation, conditions of school wouldn't exist.

between the cracks of poverty

The documentary "hardscrabble Childhood" changes the image i had of the United States. When i was a child i used to think that no one went hungry in the United States, because the government took care of it's poor. United States a has the ability to reach out and aid many developing countries to improve quality of life economically and politically. Its unbelievable to think that a country with such a great reputation for humanitarian labor encounters similar issues with poverty. Everyone has the idea that the poor are fortunate and well of in the United States because they have power an resources to help many others.
I used to admire the American school system because it provided students with free books and meals in comparison to public Schools in Honduras. First I was in Public school in Honduras but them was transfer to private School because teacher would go on strikes frequently. Schools were so overcrowded that there were two sessions one group of student went to school in the morning and others in the evening. There were two grades per classroom and a teacher would alternate by teaching one side at the time. Parents were responsible of sending their children with school supplies, books and meals.
However, the United States is just like other countries because there are people living in overcrowded, hazardous and unsanitary conditions. Even though programs such as welfare, food stamps, health care exists that are insufficient. These programs do not address the issues of discrimination, alienation that arises from poverty. Poverty is a problem beyond meeting basic necessities of many families. This documentary talks about the effects of poverty that most people never stop to think about. I myself have been always concerned about those children who were homeless, starving or been abused. Human Services needs to address those long term and short term issues behind poverty