Dissecting Educational Disparities: A Tale of Two American Schools

Five miles away, a world apart: One city, two schools, and the story of educational opportunity in modern America. I found this book to be rather intriguing as Ryan presents an argument outlining his perception of the U.S. education system’s failure to promote/achieve desegregation and how it sustains the divide between city and suburban schools. Specifically, how past education reform policies and laws have created the current state while at the same time preventing any meaningful reform. To support his argument Ryan presents a case study comparing two high schools that are only five miles apart geographically but “a world apart” in the quality of their principals, teachers, facilities and learning opportunities. Thomas Jefferson High School is located in the city of Richmond Va. Freeman High School is located in a nearby suburb in Henrico County. Jefferson has a student body that is predominately made up of minority students that are low-income (Ryan, 2010, p. 2). Freeman’s student body is the mirror opposite with predominately white middle class students (p. 2).

“It might seem odd to identify President Nixon as the (accidental) architect of modern education law and policy, but the label fits”, states Ryan (p. 4). He positions Nixon’s televised speech in 1972 addressing school desegregation as a pivotal turn on the road leading to the current state of U.S. education policy and law. Ryan argues that as Nixon denounced the possibility of busing being the answer to achieving desegregation or racial balance, he presented a compromise that called for the improvement in quality of city schools while protecting the independence of suburban schools (p. 5). He asserts that every major attempt at reforming schools since this compromise has reflected its mantra, “Save the cities, but spare the suburbs” (p.