Some newspapers, Kozol points out, muse in utilitarian terms. They argue that those children who are likely to produce more returns are likewise more deserving of financial support. But the most brutal irony of the way poor children are treated in New York is the fact that the legislators and the affluent public are more willing to spend money on incarceration than education of poor children. Most of the city's prisons are filled with former public school dropouts, and the cost of maintaining an inmate is $60,000 a year -- far greater than is required to finance a schoolchild's education.

The next city Kozol visits is the city of Camden in New Jersey. Kozol does not find much difference here. He quotes the Wall Street Journal which argues that better education cannot be bought with money. The Journal states that increasing per-pupil spending has not increased student performance in five...
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