Diane Watson Quotes

Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.

At present, black children are more segregated in their public schools than at any time since 1968. In the inner-city schools I visit, minority children typically represent 95 percent to 99 percent of class enrollment.

It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.

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.

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

It just felt wrong that the kids I was teaching didn't have the same access to materials that I did when I was a student.

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

Very few charter schools are being created in some of the best school districts in the state. If you're an educational innovator, that isn't where the greatest need is.

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.

Online education that leaves almost everybody behind except for highly motivated students, to me, can't be a viable path to education.

Where educational deprivation exists, it breeds conflict and enables repression.

In fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died.

I don't totally believe that all of the politicians see a problem with the gap between the scores of black children and other groups. I believe that many politicians think this has been the way it has always been, so what's the problem?

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.

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

Savage Inequalities

One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness.

We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.

Why doesn't anyone care that the schools in Harlem have been unsuccessful for half a century? Why is this not a big deal? To me, it's a terrible deal.

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

We know that the enemy of upward mobility is not poverty or even other people's success. The enemy of upward mobility is apathy and an educational system that offers choice to the privileged and traps the most vulnerable in unsafe and poor performing schools.

I saw first-hand that all schools are not created equal, and the students shouldn't have to go without all of the materials that they need for a great education.

African American children can't be educationally disadvantaged for 12 years and then experience a miracle cure when it comes time for admission into college.

A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this, yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly, and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom.

The District of Columbia is an extreme example of disconnect between financial input and educational outcome. Unfortunately, extreme is not the same as abnormal.