America’s Worst School System Will Soon Be Dead. Will What Replaces It Be Any Better?
27th January 2015
“I have girlfriends who have a lot of children who have been killed, and I look at their pain and hurt on their faces, and I don’t want that,” says Shantella Davis, who’s an unemployed recovering drug addict and the single mother of a six-year-old named As-Sidq. “When I leave this earth I want him to be established…I want him to be able to go to college.”
They live in the impoverished city of Camden, New Jersey, which is home to some of the nation’s lowest performing public schools. “A lot of kids that came out of Camden High not knowing how to read and write,” says Davis. “How did the kid get through the school not knowing how to read and write?”