During The Decades After Brown V. Board

A Dream Does Not Die On Its Own. A Dream Is Vanquished By The Choices Ordinary People Make About Real Things In Their Own Lives.

I Emphasize Teachers Because They Are Largely Left Out Of The Debate. None Of The Bombastic Reports That Come From Washington And Think Tanks Telling Us What Needs To Be 'fixed' - I Hate Such A Mechanistic Word, As If Our Schools Were Automobile Engines - Ever Asks The Opinions Of Teachers.

Young Children Give Us Glimpses Of Some Things That Are Eternal.

There Is Something Deeply Hypocritical In A Society That Holds An Inner-city Child Only Eight Years Old "accountable" For Her Performance On A High-stakes Standardized Exam But Does Not Hold The High Officials Of Our Government Accountable For Robbing Her Of What They Gave Their Own Kids Six Or Seven Years Before.

Children, Of Course, Don't Understand At First That They Are Being Cheated. They Come To School With A Degree Of Faith And Optimism, And They Often Seem To Thrive During The First Few Years. It Is Sometimes Not Until The Third Grade That Their Teachers Start To See The Warning Signs Of Failure. By The Fourth Grade Many Children See It Too.