Basic Necessity For All

Eaton primarily presents logic to support integration of public schools, using a particular pupil and classroom in urban Connecticut, and includes reference to studies providing evidence that this improves minority pupil achievement. What she doesn’t address, however, is the negative effect these typically low-aspiring pupils imbued with a self-defeating culture have on white pupils – hard to believe it is anything positive, and thus the major rationale for white parents opposition to busing and support for (largely resegregated) private schools.

A key ancillary topic that also needs to be addressed is the credibility of most education research. Academic journals and popular literature continually report small-scale studies and demonstration projects that show “significant” improvements – yet, overall pupil achievement in the U.S. has remained unchanged for about 20-30 years! Explanation: Flaws in the research reports.

Eaton would also like to compel America to make all schools equal (a focus of the lawsuit in Connecticut that she laments has dragged on for years), a seemingly all-American goal. The problem is that it impossible, and creates a focus on meaningless measures.

School equality is impossible because there will always be some measures perceived as important by some that will be unequal – no matter how district lines are drawn or funding is allocated. Meaningless because numerous quality studies by respected researchers (eg. James Coleman, Eric Hanuschek, Jay Greene, and others) that have shown very little, if any, relationship between measured school inputs (funding, teacher characteristics, class size, etc.) and pupil achievement – ONCE PARENTAL SOCIAL-ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS ARE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT. Similarly, the federally-mandated experiment in K.C. that mandated massive expenditure increases brought no improved pupil performance, nor has a national tripling of inflation-adjusted per-pupil expenditures in the last three decades.

In fact, efforts by Eaton et al are self-defeating because they shift emphasis away from the areas of real importance – increased parental involvement and pupil motivation. The latter is achieved across much of Asia largely by limiting access to college to those performing best on competitive exams – something Americans undermine by seeming to designate college admission as a right of all Americans, despite the fact that already close to 50% of graduates end up employed in jobs that do not require a college education.
Rating: 1 / 5

Susan Eaton, the author of The Children In Room E4, wants you to see things the right way, or at least, the way she sees them. There’s no crime in that, especially when you’re drafting a gimmicky non-fiction book on social injustice and want to convert readers into your realm of thought. It can be destructive, however, when you’re method of persuading is so overtly one-sided that it becomes almost painful to continue reading what acts as force-fed propaganda from a quasi-socialist.

Main scope of book: the inner-city Hartford school system, which act as a microcosm for inner city schools across the country, is racially segregated. The reasons for this are both direct and indirect, but regardless of the reasons, Connecticut states that this is unconstitutional. Eaton takes the reader alongside the process of the historic Sheff vs. O’Neil case, the case that decided a method of forced integration between urban minority students and their white suburban counterparts. For the plaintiffs, as well as for Eaton, the solution cannot simply be found in compounding funds into a the inner city school systems, but rather, by an extensive effort in desegregating the systems by redrawing district lines that were once defined by socioeconomic redlining and shady real estate practices designed to keep blacks and Hispanics away from their white counterparts. This is a noble idea, and certainly one of merit, but Eaton strategically corrodes her analysis by blatantly ignoring some counterarguments, arguments that anyone with a computer and ten minutes of free time could have used to negate her entire thesis.

#1. Nowhere in her book does Eaton mention the Kansas City Project, a plan that began in 1985 which lasted until 1997 where a federal district judge ordered the state of Missouri to begin an extensive desegregation process within Kansas City. $2 billion dollars were earmarked for the project, as well as an annual multi-million dollar integration fund set aside to provide transportation for white students into the city. Elaborate schools were built; well-qualified teachers replaced the mediocre educators; brand new computers were installed in the schools; top-echelon extra curricular were added; but after roughly ten years, the test scores were almost exactly the same as they were in 1985 – among the lowest in the nation. White suburbanites didn’t take the bait either. The plan initially predicted 6-10 thousand white students moving into the new schools annually, but proponents of the plan were hugely disappointed when the zenith of the integration movement was a mere 1,500 students, many of whom moved back to their old districts after one year.

#2. Eaton’s lambasting of conservative educational reforms. While I’m not a Republican (or Democrat for that matter), I found it pathetic that Eaton goes out of her way to bash the conservative policies of Nixon, Rehnquist, Reagan, Bush the 1st, and Little Bush. Nowhere does she attack a liberal policy which also ended in failure (of which there have been MANY). This blatant one-sidedness does nothing but hurt Eaton’s credibility as an objective writer and limits her ability to reason with the segments of her readership who actually try to think objectively.

#3. Eaton all but ignores the socioeconomic divide in her book. While she goes to great lengths to illustrate the many reasons why racial segregation exists – including “white flight”, unethical real estate practices, and racial profiling in job hiring – she fails to note the socioeconomic Elephant in the Room in terms of single-parent homes in urban areas as opposed those in the academically affluent suburbs. Even her poster boy for African American success – John Brittain – is describes as a man who has BOTH parents heavily involved in his upbringing, a fact that Eaton fails to accentuate.

As a writer, Eaton is sound. As a propagandist, she is even better. As an objective framer of thought, however, Eaton leaves a great deal to be desired.

Reader be warned: you won’t be getting a fair or honest view in The Children in Room E4. You will, however, be getting a rhetorical treatise into the realm of socialist one-sidedness, where the problem is defined but enormous amounts of reasons for the problem are ignored, while a plan of corrective solution is almost entirely lost in all of her rhetoric.

Rating: 2 / 5