From the NY Times:
This summer, the gap in pupil spending between the haves and the have-nots in Illinois widened substantially, with the top-spending district spending a whopping $19,361 more per student than the lowest-spending districts in the state. That's $4,000 higher than last year and the biggest reported gap in 10 years. You begin to see how education is the canary in this fiscal coal mine. If you can't afford gym, if you can't afford special ed, if you can't afford lunches or books, how will you afford such innovative items as bilingual teachers, or texts, or English as a Second Language classes, or language labs? Housing, counseling, heating oil?
The City That Works, as we like to call ourselves, does work. The American Dream, I can assure you, works. I come from a dirt street in Tijuana, after all. The eternal problem we must address, not just as a city, but as a nation, is equitable access. How do we make the dream available to as many Americans as possible?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/opinion/02urrea.html?th&emc=th
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