Nationally, overwhelmingly non-white schools receive $1,000 less per pupil than overwhelmingly white schools.

Charity isn't a good substitute for justice.

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

There has been so much recent talk of progress in the areas of curriculum innovation and textbook revision that few people outside the field of teaching understand how bad most of our elementary school materials still are.

Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure.

Political struggle is the most important thing any of us can do as a citizen in a democracy; and that means the old joining the young to fight for elemental kinds of justice.

False hope is worse than despair.