62 INVITED CHAPTERS
and Virginia), where some of the highest percentages of African Americans reside,
more than half (54%) of all Black adults, age 25 or older, do not possess a high
school diploma (p. 1).Let us not believe, though, that this hope can or will come without significant challenges.
In light of the importance of school funding on student achievement, we currently know that,
in states like Texas and Arizona, children of poverty receive less school funding, at a rate of
$23,000 to $29,000 per class, respectively. In Pennsylvania, poor children receive
approximately $33,000 per class less in school funding and, in New York, children of
poverty receive $65,000 less in funding, per class, than do their counterparts with wealthier
income profiles (Kozol, 2005). To make the magnitude of this concern even larger in scope,
in a high-poverty elementary school in the state of New York (with approximately 400
students), that school will receive $1,000,000 less in overall annual funding when compared
to the same size school in districts in that same state with the lowest number of poor children
enrolled (Kozol, 2005). Concomitantly, when we examine the issue of race, we see that our
public schools are more segregated today than ever in the history of modern times. High
schools in the center city of Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Boston routinely are populated by
Black and Hispanic children at rates of 98%–99% of the population. And these schools are
crumbling around the students they were built to serve. In 2003, the U. S. General
Accounting Office estimated that our most ancient of school buildings (many in the center
city of urban metroplexes) would require $112,000,000,000 to repair and make them
adequate for modern educational learning environments (Federal Help for Crumbling
Schools, 2003). Again, our challenges are indeed steep.
Even though the research noted earlier unmistakably calls for smaller class sizes, instead,
we see that larger and larger classes are becoming the “lived reality” for many of our
children. At Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Queens, the stated building capacity is
3,050 students; there are currently (AY 2006–07) 4,424 students in attendance. At the time of
this publication, New York City Schools average more than 20 students in early grades, more
than 26 in middle grades, and almost 30 in high school. Many classrooms in the city have 35
to 40 students (Hamison, 2006; Hevesi, 2006). The data are clear, smaller class sizes are
powerful tools for school improvement—unfortunately, the will to implement these class
sizes simply does not seem to be in place in many communities. We can and must do better!
GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW, WHY DO WE BEHAVE TO THE CONTRARY?
Although not yet addressed in detail here, my work for the past decade or so (as most of
you well know) has focused on the addiction that America and the American public has with
regard to standardized tests and testing initiatives (Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2002a; Smith &
Ruhl-Smith, 2002b; Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2004; Smith & Ruhl-Smith, 2006). The desire for
precisely calibrated state and national standards, along with their companion standardized
testing pieces has hurriedly swept across this nation and, in the opinion of this critic, has been
largely and rather simply predicated upon the belief that any successful business must test and
retest the end product of assembly-lines that manufacture what will eventually reach the
showroom floor. Therefore, this testing and retesting is replicated now in thousands of
classrooms from Maine to California. Students, some as young as four years of age, are
forced to prove that, as an end product, they are worthy of passing inspection. However, the
proponents of such standardization seldom share the full picture regarding such test/retest