How Education Is Lived in America

In 2000, The New York Times featured a summer-long series, “How Race Is Lived in America”. Through interviews, this groundbreaking series chronicled race relations in American society. If readers had hoped to find good news, quickly they met disappointment. The newspaper’s bleak findings detail Americans who reflect on experiences growing up apart from friends because of race; others give remarkable accounts of confronting the racial divide in housing, entertainment, law, sports, and medicine. 


The series attempted to re-examine race relations in every aspect of American life, yet it omitted any significant discourse on race in education. New York City is the nation’s largest public school system. Its student population totals 1.1 million, yet remains nearly 85% non-white. Unfortunately, it does not take an article to realize that white parents are not sending their children to public schools. In both Chicago and New York City, my experience teaching has made the reasons clear: inadequate funding, the bureaucratic infrastructure, low student expectations, and other problems posed by the pedagogy of poverty have created a failed public education system. Those who can avoid this nightmare, pay the money to send children to private schools. The juxtaposition of race and class disadvantages force low-income, students of color to endure the hardships of New York public education. 

Since this article's first submission in 2007, others have incited public discourse around alternatives to public education, namely charter schools and elite private schools. Waiting for Superman provides a tear jerking look into the competitive struggle for entry into coveted charter schools caused by "No Child Left Behind" policies. Tonight CNN will broadcast American Promise, a story about two boys' journey through one of the most elite schools in the country.