Noted author 'shocked' by Cuomo's comments
Friends' views differ on governor's prescription for failing schools
By Rick Karlin
Published 9:59 pm, Thursday, November 7, 2013
Albany
Jonathan Kozol, one of the nation's most acclaimed writers on the subject of poverty, said that while he considers Andrew Cuomo a friend he was "utterly shocked" by the governor's recent comments that schools exhibiting poor academic performance should face a "death penalty."
"You improve a good school by nurturing good teachers and pouring in resources," Kozol told a rapt audience Thursday at the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering for a conference sponsored by the Schuyler Center forAnalysis and Advocacy.
Cuomo made his comments about "a death penalty for failing schools" in late August in Buffalo. "If the school fails, the school has to end," Cuomo told reporters, adding that options could include a takeover by the state or replacement by a charter school.
"I don't want Albany to sit there and tell communities how to run their schools, but I do feel comfortable sitting in Albany and saying, 'Failing schools is not an option,'" Cuomo said at the time.
The remarks earned criticism from teachers unions, who said they were inflammatory.
Kozol, whose books include "Savage Inequalities" and "Death at an Early Age," didn't shy away from his own blunt commentary — despite suffering the after-effects of what he described as a complicated cataract operation and enduring a trip on a seven-passenger plane from his home base in Boston.
Two-year-olds from wealthy families in New York City, he said, attend $28,000-per-year pre-school programs while their impoverished counterparts in the Bronx suffer from rotting teeth due to a lack of dental care. Some poor kids also reside in households where the phone is cut off on a regular basis because their parents can't pay the bill.
Schools in places such as Poughkeepsie, the South Bronx, parts of Chicago and East Los Angeles are composed almost entirely of black or Hispanic students, part of what Kozol said is