The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling today on whether Jefferson County (Kentucky) Public Schools may use race as a factor in implementing its school assignment policy.
A Jefferson County mother is suing the district in an attempt to get rid of the district's desegregation policy, saying her son was unfairly denied the school of his choice because he was white.
If you're skeptical of a plan that would improve education and ease perceived racial tensions by using race as a cornerstone, well, you're most likely not a public school bureaucrat. I adamantly oppose these types of disrimination practices, but I'm not sure the following comments by one of the plaintiff's lawyers helps her cause:
"We can't have this in our school system ... which will perpetuate racial isolationism because it does nothing to stop the achievement gap," said Teddy Gordon, a Louisville lawyer representing Crystal Meredith, whose son, Joshua McDonald, was denied his first choice in schools because he was white.
Gordon is right to an extent. This type of behavior should not be occurring in a public school system, but opposition should have nothing to do with perceived "achievement gaps." It should have to do with equal treatment under the law, which certainly is not the case today.
Learning is not dependent upon race; it's dependent upon how and what students are taught, how they are expected to behave in school, and a litany of other factors. In fact, according to Thomas Sowell, from 1870 to 1955, the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., "repeatedly equall[ed] or exceed[ed] national norms on standardized tests."
Indeed, for educrats to reduce the complexities of modern government school bureaucracy to mere skin color as the panacea to their instructional woes is the epitome of racist thought.
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