...and Unfinished Business by Pedro Noguera and Jean Yonemura both weigh in on the legacy of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools. Both books ask, "Can schools be agents of societal change?" and illustrate that substantial work still needs to be done in order to fulfill the letter and spirit of Brown. The approaches of the two works, however, reflect the authors' different central premises.

Segregated Schools argues that we are witnessing the resegregation and permanent inferiorization of urban, poor, predominantly nonwhite public schools. According to Street, this is the result of several factors. Among them is the reliance on tax revenues to fund public education, which systematizes the funding disparities between wealthier suburban and predominantly white districts, and poorer inner city and predominantly black and Latino districts. Another factor is the tracking of students of color into remedial and other basic skills courses that hinder their chances of going to college. A third is the racist perception of some teachers, school administrators, and politicians that students of color are not as educable as whites, which has led to a "militarist obsession with 'security'" in many poor urban nonwhite...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Radical Teacher
Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent.(Book review), December 22, 2006
Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?(Book review), December 22, 2006

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