Part 4

Part four of the textbook provided several different ideas and opinions regarding the public education system from the 1980s through today. The public education system in the United States had undergone several significant changes throughout the mid-20th century. Federal mandates required schools to be integrated and desegregated. Schools could no longer discriminate based on gender or orientation. Public education systems were also now required to provide adequate means and accommodations for students who are physically or mentally disabled. However, there were still many challenges still to face. Perhaps one of the largest challenges faced by public education systems was the “white flight” of wealthy and middle-class white families. The white flight describes the movement of upper- and middle-class white families from inner city urban environments that were largely integrated to the suburbs. Poor and lower-class families, typically minority based, were not able to afford to move to the suburbs. Because of the white flight, urban and inner-city school districts experienced great reduction in budgets and supplies due to the decrease in taxes across the cities. In an attempt to combat these loses, many politicians and school districts began to experiment with the idea of competition on the free market.

President Reagan is quote as saying, “Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.” An idea of opening public education to private companies was new in the 1980’s and 1990’s. “You want to improve public education? Says John Golle, founder and chairman of Education Alternatives, Inc., a for-profit company. “The way to do it is to compete with them. Allow them the chance to compete with private enterprise, and vice versa. That’s the way you’re going to make public education better.” In some cities across the country, religious groups sought to open religious oriented schools on taxpayer dollars. This practice was not well received by all. Jonathan Kozol says, “Think of cities that are just struggling to hold together… and then imagine what it would be like if you added a system whereby every little intellectual, ethnic, theological splinter group could indoctrinate children separately, and use public money to do it. It would rip apart the social fabric of this nation. Kozol was against the notion of religious schools receiving public funds.

Kozol believed that for public education to be successful schools needed to be integrated across all religious, gender, and socio-economic lines. Kozol viewed public schools as he viewed society as a whole, a melting pot of people from all walks of life working together in harmony. Kozol believed that allowing individually oriented schools would destroy what America stood for as a whole.