Questions for Kozol

I started reading Jonathan Kozol's Shame of a Nation recently. It's good, but frustrating. I read the first third of Savage Inequalities three years ago, right as I was starting to teach. It was great, shocking, but felt superfluous once I actually began in the classroom. I was seeing that stuff day to day, so I hardly felt like reading more about it when I came home. This book is similar, in that it's telling me a whole bunch of things I already know. It is nice that he is also outraged, but so far he has failed to suggest any realistic steps to take to address the horrible inequities that exist in our schools. He repeats that it is a societal issue. A disgraceful national attitude of complacence regarding the sub-par education that impoverished children receive. I agree. But I want to ask him:
What do you want me to DO about it?
I think I might just have to skip to the last chapter and see if he actually has some specific ideas. Otherwise I might just give up on this book.

Its intent is good. And it definitely would be fantastically eye-opening for people who are totally separated from the public schools and don't really have an idea of the disparities that exist, but, aside from college students who are assigned this book for a class (S's sister gave this to us; she had bought it for one of her classes and never opened it), I'm not sure those people would pick this book to read.

I am just feeling so frustrated lately with the sequestration of knowledge and experience. A group of our friends started something called "The New Teachers' Roundtable," where we get together every couple of weeks to discuss issues related to being a young/new teacher, teaching in New Orleans, teaching in a community we're not from, all that sort of pragmatist-idealist-let's-really-do-something-by-sitting-in-a-circle type of talking that's popular at liberal arts schools. It's great, although it still feels limited in the same way Kozol's book I think is limited in its effectiveness. The participants (who volunteer to spend a few hours of their precious Sunday afternoons), or willing readers, aren't really the folks whose minds we really need to change. These are people already invested, already trying, already well-aware of the issues and inequities in education and trying to figure out how to best address them.

I am well-aware there is no easy answer, but I'm also aware (and so are you if you've been following this blog for any amount of time) how easy it is to list the problems and injustices within our school system. It is far harder to suggest practical solutions. To sell such solutions to the masses. To get politicians and voters to really insist that schools must be created equal, if we ever want to truly create an egalitarian society. To get people to admit that we don't have that now.

I know it's hard, but it's also hard to just stew in the problems. I've been doing it for almost three years now and I've got to get out. I can't handle another year at my school. I've made lots of progress with my students and in the classes I lead, but it's barely blip of a water molecule in a drop in the bucket. The system as a whole is so biased and ineffective it is exhausting to work within. But I'm not sure about where to go next. And I really would like someone to be able to tell me.

Mr. Kozol, do you have an answer for me? What should I do?