Education and race

An excellent op-ed in the Washington Post

As Dan Domenech of the American Association of School Administrators told NPR last week, "The correlation between student achievement and Zip code is 100 percent. The quality of education you receive is entirely predictable based on where you live." And where you live in America today depends largely on income and race.

Consider the recent results from a test of 15-year-olds around the world. Headlines noted the embarrassing American mediocrity (31st out of 65 countries in math, with scores below the international average). Even worse, our results are profoundly segregated by race. White and Asian Americans are still in the upper echelon. But African American and Latino students lag near the bottom quartile of world standards. As we think about our game plan to "win the future," our black and Latino students won't be competing with China and Finland - they're on track to scrap it out with Bulgaria and Mexico.

Some on the left will say this is the pernicious result of poverty. Solve poverty, and you solve the Zip-code-equals-outcomes issue. Some on the right will blame culture. Stop teenage pregnancy and crime, and the outcomes look different.

Like millions of parents hoping to do right by their kids, Kelley Williams-Bolar thought that schools were the answer. She didn't have the luxury of waiting a generation while intellectuals argue about poverty or culture. She looked at her options, she looked at the law and she looked at her children. Then she made a choice.

What would you have done?