Apartheid Does Not Happen Spontaneously,

During The Decades After Brown V. Board Of Education There Was Terrific Progress. Tens Of Thousands Of Public Schools Were Integrated Racially. During That Time The Gap Between Black And White Achievement Narrowed.

It Is A Commonplace By Now To Say That The Urban School Systems Of America Contain A Higher Percentage Of Negro Children Each Year.

Apartheid Education, Rarely Mentioned In The Press Or Openly Confronted Even Among Once-progressive Educators, Is Alive And Well And Rapidly Increasing Now In The United States.

But For The Children Of The Poorest People We're Stripping The Curriculum, Removing The Arts And Music, And Drilling The Children Into Useful Labor. We're Not Valuing A Child For The Time In Which She Actually Is A Child.

I Have Been Criticized Throughout The Course Of My Career For Placing Too Much Faith In The Reliability Of Children's Narratives; But I Have Almost Always Found That Children Are A Great Deal More Reliable In Telling Us What Actually Goes On In Public School Than Many Of The Adult Experts Who Develop Policies That Shape Their Destinies.