Anyone who has ever read any of Jonathan Kozol's books, such as Death at an Early Age, Amazing Grace, Savage Inequalities, or Shame of the Nation, cannot help but be affected by the portrayal of the inhumane conditions under which students and teachers in some of the nation's poorest schools are expected to learn. There are shootings in the streets outside, no heat or air conditioning, crumbling ceilings and walls, classes housed in closets and trailers, overcrowding, malnourished and homeless students, and every dehumanizing condition you would imagine in a Third World country — right here in the U.S. Yet every year, a few students from these schools manage to graduate and find their way to college. This can only be accomplished by the dedication of teachers who choose to work in terrible conditions, for little pay, and who often receive criticism or outright scorn for their efforts.

Mr. Kozol hasn't written a book since 2007 — even the most dedicated activists and educators grow old — but there has been little change for the better in the poorest schools in this country since then. In fact, with the recent economic downturn, conditions are likely to have gotten worse in many of them. In keeping with the spirit of Kozol's work to shed light on the plight of students and teachers laboring under terrible conditions, here is a look at the 10 poorest schools in the U.S.

East St. Louis, Illinois, Tomorrow's Builders Charter School. Half a century ago, East St. Louis was a prospering and growing community but in the decades since, the city has been in a slow and steady decline that has left it dangerous and desperate. Its schools haven't been left unscathed during this process, and Tomorrow's Builders Charter School is no exception. It was ranked as the worst performing public high school in the U.S. by Neighborhood Scout and with good reason: none of the school's 181 students were proficient in math and just 3% were proficient in reading. Located in a deeply impoverished community, the school has few resources to improve and is battling against one of the highest violent crime rates in the U.S. and rampant gang activity. Today, four in 10 residents of East St. Louis live below the poverty line, two out of five children are born to a teenager, and just under half of the city's children drop out of school before the age of 15. Amid this environment, it's no mystery why schools like Tomorrow's Builders suffer, and with little tax revenue coming in from the surrounding community, reform is a long, slow, and often frustrating process. Albany, Georgia, Albany High School. It shouldn't come as a surprise that an Albany-area school would rank as one of the poorest in the nation, as the community itself is one of the most deeply impoverished both within the state and in the U.S. as a whole. The city has been hit hard by unemployment due to several large businesses choosing to relocate elsewhere, and the resulting 11% unemployment rate has contributed to 27.7% of residents living below the poverty line, the fifh highest poverty level in the U.S. Schools in the area have felt the pinch of this economic turmoil as well, and Albany High School has been hit especially hard, making the Georgia State Department of Education's list of the worst-performing schools. Just this year, the school was awarded a School Improvement Grant through the U.S. Department of Education, and with this additional funding, hopefully students at Albany High will see improvements in the coming years. Brownsville, Texas, Porter High School. The Brownsville School District is one of the poorest in the nation, with 94% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunches district-wide. The city itself has the highest poverty level in the nation, with 36.3% of its residents living at or below the poverty line and a whopping 12.5% without a job. Because Brownsville is a border town, many Porter High School students are recent immigrants and 43% are still learning English. While the community might be poor and the schools may have extremely limited resources, test scores are holding steady in this community. In fact, the school district was recently awarded the $1 million dollar Broad Prize for Urban Education for making academic advances, a sum that will be divided up between the district's seniors for college scholarships. Porter High is part of this surprising level of achievement, as its students did well on standardized tests, with proficiencies of 70% in math, 79% in reading, 77% in science, and 95% in social studies. Chicago, Illinois, Paul Robeson High School. Chicago's South Side boasts some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States, with gang violence claiming the lives of dozens of high school and middle school students each year. The city's Robeson High School, located in the infamous Englewood neighborhood, ranks among the lowest performing schools in the U.S., according to data from Neighborhood Scout, with just 2% proficient in reading and 5% in math. It's not the only school on the South Side to make the list, with Harper High School and Englewood Technical Prep also bringing in pitifully low scores. Robeson's poor performance and budgetary issues may be due to where the school is located, as Englewood is one of the poorest Chicago neighborhoods. According to City-Data.com 43% of Englewood residents live below the poverty line and the median income is just $22,131. Making things even harder on this already struggling school? About 31% of the school's students are coming from single-parent homes and the neighborhood led the city in homicides last year, with a large number of both the perpetrators and the victims being high school students. Reading, Pennsylvania, Reading Senior High School: Reading has made headlines recently, but not in any way the struggling city would like to do so. Recent Census Bureau data revealed it as the poorest city in America, with the largest share of residents living in poverty for a city of its size, a figure that stands at a staggering 41.3%. In decline for the past decade, the city slipped into despair with the departure of the major industries that had helped to sustain it, and the education system is reflecting these struggles. At Reading Senior High School, almost 89% of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, up from just 44% in 2003. The economic woes of the community haven't helped test scores, either, with only 27% of students performing at a proficient level in math and 43% in reading. Frustration with the school system may be part of the reason this school has such high drop-out rates, with a distressing 50% of students leaving school before getting their diplomas.

Only the efforts of outstanding teachers and administrators are able to keep these schools functioning at all. Legislation such as No Child Left Behind, the educational reforms proposed by a recent Council on Foreign Relations taskforce headed by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice, and even President Obama's threat to penalize schools with high drop-out rates in his 2012 State of the Union Address, only serve to further weaken these schools by punishing them for "failing" to teach their students. How can even the best teachers reach all of the students who live under the circumstances described here?

In areas where the tax revenue funding system has failed because of urban flight and de-industrialization, or exorbitant tax breaks given to corporations in these impoverished areas, societal and governmental responsibility for providing the support and funding for these schools is needed to help the schools and their neighborhoods crawl out of poverty. The argument that hard work will allow any individual to escape the circumstances of their birth is a myth; you can only pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have boots to begin with.