Quote

An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.

The segregated schools of today are arguably no more equal than the segregated schools of the past.

Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society.

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all.

The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.

Well, we have to provide the world's best schools. We certainly don't have them, but that's our objective.

School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged.

I cannot understand how the education of this United States of America has been fooled time and time again. Either make it separate but equal or integrate, therefore it will be equal. And it has been separate and unequal.

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.