2005's Most Dishonest Book . I can't speak with authority about other deseg cases, but I AM knowledgeable about the St. Louis case, having spent four years on the St. Louis Board of Education (1989 - 1993.).    Simply put, deseg has destroyed the St. Louis Public Schools (SLPSs), which were arguably, the best large public school system in the nation prior to deseg, when they were segregated and run by white Lutherans.    Today, after 26 years of deseg, the SLPSs are probably no more than one year from losing their state accreditation and being taken over by the state of Missouri. Let's consider some facts rather than the disinformation of dilettantes and poseurs such as Kozol:      COSTS    Deseg has cost the State of Missouri about $8 Billion between the Kansas City and St. Louis cases. The bill in K.C. totaled about $3.5 Billion when it finally ended, while the St. Louis case has almost certainly passed the $4 Billion mark. (These statistics are scrupulously hidden by the leftist news media.) What have we realized from this expenditure?    First of all, state money diverted to these two deseg cases was stolen from every school district in Missouri not participating in a deseg case. Small, rural school districts routinely spend between $4,000 and $5,500 per pupil each year. In St. Louis, the per-pupil expenditure has been as high as $11,711: Yet, those rural, so-called "out-state" districts do a far better job of educating and graduating students, despite having half the resources. (I'm sure in Kozol's mind they are merely "goyim," and deserve no better...)    Ironically, while less affluent "out-state" districts were robbed of state funding by deseg, the wealthier school districts in St. Louis County experienced a massive WINDFALL from deseg: Since they are reimbursed by the state the AVERAGE per-pupil cost for each city transfer, (rather than their "marginal" cost,) wealthy districts such as Clayton, Ladue and Parkway benefited from a massive infusion of new revenues, although these school districts have traditionally out-spent almost every other Missouri district by a factor of three or more. (For example, Clayton currently spends about $15,000 per pupil per year.)     ACHIEVEMENT    In the SLPSs, half the students test at the 20th percentile or lower on nationally standardized tests. This stat would be even worse, except that (I am told) the "LD" (or "learning disabled") kids do not take the standardized tests. There are legions of LD kids...    In a rare moment of wisdom and sobriety, a federal judge sitting on our deseg case ordered a test of its efficacy in the early 1990s. That study, called the "Lissitz Study" revealed that city students (i.e., black students) bused to predominately white county school districts improved less academically than did every other category of student in the SLPS. That is, they improved less than students in all-black, the "naturally"-integrated, and "magnet" schools.    When the Educational Testing Service still "normed" the SATs between 400 and 1600, the average SLPS student had a combined SAT of 760. Worse yet, these were the best and most motivated students, with further educational aspirations, who "self-selected" themselves to take the SATs and were therefore, a highly "skewed" sample relative to the average SLPS student.      Deseg is almost universally motivated by the laughable paradigm that, if we throw enough money at our inner-city schools, black kids will achieve at a level commensurate with white kids. Now that even William Coleman has repudiated his own research on this subject, ("The Coleman Report," cited in "Brown v. Board,") Kozol and deseg's other defenders could spend their time far more productively by studying the lessons of "The Bell Curve" in order to understand academic disparities between the races.    VESTED INTERESTS    It has been remarked that the defenders of deseg will never relent until the last white kid has been driven from the system. This is because the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is a "co-plaintiff" in most (if not ALL) U.S. deseg cases, and is periodically distributed "legal expenses" by the federal courts. These are a very important source of revenue to the NAACP, which has experienced declining membership and numerous financial scandals over the last several decades.    Similarly, deseg has meant a great deal more than the mindless expenditure of billions to bus students around. One of the most injurious elements of the St. Louis deseg plan has been a massive affirmative-action program for administrators and teachers. The SLPSs now employ more functionally illiterate individuals than the N.B.A., and have become nothing less than an employment agency for lazy and incompetent blacks with political connections.     Essentially, the same black women who, 30 or 40 years ago were employed in middle-class households as "domestic" help, are now SLPS teachers and administrators. ("I is a teacher.") How anyone who never really absorbed a high school education could be presumed able to teach mystifies all but Kozol and deseg's other defenders. If teachers and administrators in the SLPSs were required to take the S.A.T.s, more than half would test significantly below average: We know this because they have already demonstrated the fact!    Approximately half of all SLPS teachers and about 60% of its administrators attended Harris-Stowe State Teacher's College, which has the second lowest academic standards of any institution of "higher learning" in Missouri. Last time I called their admissions office, I was told that Harris-Stowe accepted applicants with a combined SAT of 780. It should come as no surprise that recent measures of SLPS student SATs do not differ significantly from those of many of their teachers.      HYPOCRISY    A truly fascinating phenomenon I have observed is that there seem to be few defenders of deseg among those whose kids actually participated in such a program. It doesn't take a parent long to understand that deseg isn't so wonderful when your kid gets rolled for his lunch money every day, or your daughter gets beaten up because she won't date outside her race.     Now Kozol may not have kids, but I'll just bet that if he does, they did not participate in any voluntary deseg programs, if any were available where he resides. (The Jews are mustard for this sort of thing, as long as they are merely allowed to posture and it doesn't actually cost them anything...)    I once had the rare opportunity to sit next to Dr. Susan Uchitelle, the  Jewish woman who headed the St. Louis Deseg's "Voluntary Inter-district Coordinating Council" throughout the 1980s and 1990s. (She was paid $60,000 per year, but from what I could discern, her sole responsibility seemed to be running interference with the news media, so the rubes out there wouldn't get the wrong idea about the joys and benefits of deseg whenever there was a stabbing, gun-shot incident, murder, or race riot.)    I considered it an "opportunity" because I was able to ask her a question that no one had ever had the impertinence to ask of her before: "Have any of your children participated in the voluntary transfer program?" (That is, were her kids, who would have been "poster children" for the county-to-city deseg program, allowed to transfer from their all-white county schools in order to be voluntarily bused to inner-city schools?)     What do you think was the answer, oh gentle reader? Your response to this question may have far-reaching implications for your understanding of the world around you and some varieties of its inhabitants, such as Jonathan Kozol...     (I'll give you a hint: Susan Uchitelle's attitude toward deseg is very much like Leona Helmsley's attitude toward taxes...)
Output: NEG