"Liberal critics of the Reagan era sometimes note that social policy in the United States, to the extent that it concerns black children and poor children, has been turned back several decades. But this assertion, which is accurate as a description of some setbacks in the areas of housing, health and welfare, is not adequate about the present-day reality in public education. In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years."
— Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, written in 1991
