Jonathan Kozol, at age 76, has a new book out entitled Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in ... In it, he looks yet again—reportedly in career-summation mode—at the devastating consequences of America's failure to provide equitable educational opportunities in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

In a review in the Washington Post that has the edu-blogosphere humming, Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp says the book "paint[s] an engrossing if bleak picture" of the communities portrayed but seems outdated at points and, more problematically, fails to account for the progress that has been made in improving m... in recent years. She writes:

It is simply untrue that, as Kozol writes, "none of these schools ... is offering the kind of education that children of the neighborhood deserve." Today hundreds of exceptional schools, both charter and traditional public schools, are putting low-income students on a path to and through college. Given the daunting circumstances Kozol lays out, we should applaud the successes of those who have made a difference against them, rather than diminishing them or making them seem rarer than they are.

In a snarky—and probably inevitable—rejoinder, Edushyster offers...

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