Bad teachers who are unwanted in better off schools are unloaded onto worse schools. Why should I go to war and fight for opportunities I can't enjoy - for things rich people value, for their freedom, but I do not have that freedom and I can't go to their schools?' He writes of science classes with no lab equipment, bathroom stalls with no doors, classrooms with leaking ceilings, playgrounds covered in broken glass, schools next door to factories belching dangerous levels of pollution.

A 16-year-old South Bronx student in 1990 'is facing final exams, but, because the school requires students to pass in their textbooks one week prior to the end of the semester, he is forced to study without math and English texts.' Another student says, 'Most of the students in this school won't go to college. Kozol tells tale after tale of deprivation. In practice, this rarely happens, which is why schools in rich districts are lavishly equipped, teacher salaries are much higher, class sizes are smaller, textbooks are plentiful and up to date, athletic facilities are abundant, libraries are full of books, bathrooms are clean, and students white. In poor districts, because the properties are worth less, tax revenues will be inadequate and the state is supposed to kick in sufficient funds to raise the amount to a level approximately equal to the richest districts. 'In the wealthiest districts, this is frequently enough to operate an adequate school system,' writes Kozol. Local taxes on the value of homes and businesses in the district form the base of per-student funding. Kozol described the vast funding disparities between rich and poor school districts in America, due to the way public education is primarily (or initially) funded by local real estate taxes. Jonathan Kozol wrote Savage Inequalities twenty years ago, but obviously its lessons haven't taken hold. If convicted, she could face 20 years in prison. In Connecticut in April, Tanya McDowell, a homeless single mother from Bridgeport, is being charged with larceny and conspiracy for enrolling her 5-year old son in Norwalk schools, fraudulently using a friend's address. They demanded she pay $30,000 in back tuition, for four years of schooling. 'Those dollars need to stay home with our students,' said officials with the Copley-Fairlawn district, which went to the trouble and expense of hiring a private investigator to film the mother driving her children into the district. 'School officials said she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it,' said an ABC article. In Ohio in January, Kelley Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in county jail and three years probation for enrolling her children in the Copley-Fairlawn School District rather than Akron, where she lived. Two cases of mothers lying about where they reside in order to get their young children into better school districts have made news recently.

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol