Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States.

Jonathan Kozol, a longtime critic of racial and economic inequality in U.S. public schooling, used the phrase “apartheid education” in the 1990s amid growing evidence of resegregation after earlier civil-rights-era gains. The remark reflects his argument that many urban districts were becoming increasingly isolated by race and poverty, with stark disparities in funding, facilities, class size, and curricular opportunity compared with predominantly white, affluent suburban schools. Kozol often framed this trend as insufficiently confronted by mainstream media and by education professionals who had once championed integration, warning that structural segregation was being normalized rather than treated as a democratic crisis.

The quote argues that school segregation in the United States is not merely a lingering legacy but an active, worsening system—so entrenched that it can be ignored or euphemized even by those who consider themselves progressive. By invoking “apartheid,” Kozol deliberately draws a moral analogy to a formally segregated regime, emphasizing that separation by race and class produces predictable, systemic deprivation rather than accidental inequity. The line also critiques public discourse: if the press and educators avoid naming the problem, reform becomes technocratic and piecemeal, while the underlying structure—separate and unequal schooling—continues to expand.