Jonathan Kozol Quotes

For too long, we financed our schools in a way that has systematically left large segments of our population behind.

The system that had grown up in most states is that wealthy districts with an affluent population can afford to spend a lot more on their public school systems than the poorer districts.

I cannot understand how the education of this United States of America has been fooled time and time again. Either make it separate but equal or integrate, therefore it will be equal. And it has been separate and unequal.

The gap in education in this country, the unfairness of the schools, is one of the great unfairness in this society.

I had been very focused on the issue of education disparities in our country, and literally, by the time kids are just nine years old, in low-income communities, they're already three or four grade levels behind nine-year-olds in high-income communities.

If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.

What the North is sending down for our schools is not money but dynamite. This education is ruining our negroes. They’re demanding equality.

The sheltering of upper income children in private schools not only accelerates the deterioration of public education, it hides its consequences from precisely those people who could do something about it.

… while they're adding teachers in places like South Korea, we're laying them off in droves. It's unfair to our kids. It undermines their future and ours. And it has to stop. Pass this bill, and put our teachers back in the classroom where they belong.

In New York City, the idea that district schools advance equality is a myth.

We have a government that boasts about free education. Those of us who have scratched below the surface know it is costing us by denying opportunities for others to attend college or university.

The inequalities are greater now than in '92. Some states have equalized per-pupil spending but they set the 'equal level' very low, so that wealthy districts simply raise extra money privately.

In some parts of the world, students are going to school every day. It's their normal life. But in other part of the world, we are starving for education... it's like a precious gift. It's like a diamond.

The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled.

I believe that education is the greatest equalizer; thus, I will continue to fight to equalize the playing field in an educational atmosphere that is not always level!

I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.

In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school.

Title I dollars are well spent. They are really making a difference in the education of students.

We spend a lot of time training and retraining. It's heartbreaking because our education system has failed all of us. And again you go to China, even Mexico, Brazil the education systems are valued - ours are not in this country at K-12 level. It's amazing how that change has transpired in my lifetime.

In Colombia, education is sometimes considered a luxury, not a human right. And it's not a priority in the agendas of many leaders.

We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children.

I believe education should be a right for every child, but tragically in many parts of world it is a privilege for certain children whose parents have money. There are 72 million children in the world who don't go to school and many of them are in Africa.

The U. S. is suffering greatly by the defects of the educational system .... we are producing an underclass.

Public schooling is welfare for the middle class.

The public education system works for children of families like mine but it does not work for the children of families who I represent …