In 2009, I groused that modern Democrats were repeating George Wallace’s awful policy of blocking educational opportunities for minority children. Based on this video, the folks at Unleash Prosperity Now are even more upset.
That’s a hard-hitting video, but opponents of school choice deserve scorn. Especially the hypocrites who send their own kids to private school while fighting against that option for less-advantaged families.
Let’s take a closer look at how school choice is a civil rights issue.
I decided to write about this topic because of the video, but also after seeing this tweet from David Frum, in which he correctly observes that it makes little sense to advocate racial preferences for college admissions while ignoring the fact that minority kids have fallen way behind by the time they are thinking about college.
I’m sure David is right about the importance of a good home environment, but it’s also important to offer minority kids better K-12 schools.
Marc Thiessen shares this concern and, in his Washington Post column, specifically recommends school choice to help narrow the achievement gap.
But while racial preferences were the wrong solution, the underlying problem is real: We have horrific racial disparities in elementary and secondary education in this country that make it harder for poor Black and Hispanic students to gain admission to, and succeed in, college. And that is because millions are trapped in failing public schools that do not prepare them for college, much less for life — and because their parents do not have the same choices as affluent White parents do to send them to good schools. …Instead of trying to help kids at the end of the process by lowering admissions standards, we should be helping them at the start of the process by giving them access to better schools… Fortunately, conservatives have…been…taking affirmative action of their own to help these kids — passing school choice laws across the country that address the systematic discrimination in our public schools.
By the way, there is already plenty of academic evidence that school choice leads to better academic outcome…and more racial integration.
By contrast, there’s also plenty of evidence that government school do a terrible job with minority students.
Thiessen’s column has some of the grim data.
The state of education for poor minority students in the United States is a disgrace. An analysis of 2021-22 data by Fox News’s Project Baltimore found that 93 percent of students in Baltimore public schools could not do math at grade level, including 23 schools where not a single student could do so. In Illinois, data showed 53 schools — most of them in Chicago — where not a single student could do math at grade level, and 30 where not a single student can read at grade level. In Minnesota, there were 19 schools where not one student could do math at grade level — half of them in Minneapolis-St. Paul — while half of all students in the public school system could not read at grade level. There is simply no excuse for keeping kids trapped in schools like these. …Blame for this debacle lies in large part with teachers’ unions.
Yes, teacher unions deserve much of the blame. But let’s not overlook the role of politicians (including some Republicans) who have made horrible and immoral decisions to put the interests of teacher unions above the interests of poor children.
