We were poor. We were so poor, in my neighborhood the rainbow was in black-and-white.

Our high school ranked near the bottom of Ohio’s schools, but that had little to do with the staff and much to do with the students.

P8- mere existence of school discourages and disables the poor from taking control of their own learning.

Their chances of escaping from the underclass, from the vicious cycle of poverty, were no better than those of their similarly alienated black neighbors and probably worse for those who didn’t speak English

Of course some of us had some geography in school and had studied maps, but a school map is a terribly uncommunicative thing.

The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda

teacher flight from the challenges in such schools — violence and disorder, truancy, lower school readiness and English-language proficiency, less supportive home environments — means that students in these schools get a generally inferior education. Many teachers in poor schools today are doing a heroic job, driven by idealism, but in a market economy the most obvious way to attract more and better teachers to such demanding work is to improve the conditions of their employment.

Here the question is whether growing up in a poor neighborhood imposes any additional handicaps. The answer is yes.

poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Those without numerous skills lacked the flexibility to compete.

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

To the relatively poor (who are so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases a mocking cruelty.

They lacked something that could have been given to them if we’d only known they needed it: a community around them that prepared them properly for the world.