Friday, June 29, 2007

The Sky Is Falling

Or so certain people would have you believe, given yesterday's Supreme Court ruling against educational districts using race as a determinant in school assignments.

As far as I'm concerned, this decision was a slam-dunk. Students were being told they could not attend their choice of schools because of their race. That was the reason that Brown v. BOE was ever filed in the first place.

But, as always, the moonbats came crawling out of the woodwork to explain why the decision was wrong, wrong, evil, racist, halitosis, wrong.

Especially amusing to me was this quote:
"The 5-4 decision reflects the narrowest of court majorities, but it has the potential to touch the lives of many by making it unlawful for public school officials and their communities to consider race among other factors in taking needed steps to address the resegregation of a critically important institution that is more segregated today than it was 30 years ago."

— Cassandra Butts, senior vice president for domestic policy at the Center for American Progress.

Ummm.....OK....so you're mad at the Court for striking down desegregation plans that have resulted in schools being more segregated than they were when you instituted them in the first place.

And along the same inane lines:
Experts say segregation contributes to the educational achievement gap among poor black and Latino students, because it typically means they are stuck in schools with the highest teacher turnover and the lowest rates of parental involvement.

Which, of course, will be solved by importing some white and Asian kids.

No need to do crazy things like....you know....get the parents involved, which would probably also help with, like, discipline, and might then lead to, maybe, a better classroom environment, which could, uh, make more teachers stay, and kinda sorta, lead to better education.

Here I've thought all these years that we could achieve better schools through such dry and esoteric things as testing and enforcing strong academic standards, when it's just like a seasoning rub for steak; all you need is the correct mix of salt and pepper.

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