NCLB exposing a flaw in the system

Joanne Jacobs has an interesting post on the No Child Left Behind Act and why African-Americans should support it. She quotes from this New York Times Op/Ed:

The law is not perfect and will need adjustments. But its core requirement that the states educate minority children to the same standards as white children breaks with a century-old tradition of educational unfairness. The new law could potentially surpass Brown v. Board of Education in terms of widening access to high-quality public education.

I just had that unfairness underlined for me the other day. I live in a racially mixed school-district, but, you know how it is. Many white families send their kids to private school or move to a better district when their kids reach school age. As a result, the majority of the school kids are black. Well, the district newsletter came in the mail the other day and as I leafed through it, I saw a picture full of white kids. My first though was that I had been mistaken about the white-flight thing. Then I read the caption. It was a picture of the kids in the gifted program. Telling.

More African-American families are homeschooling, a traditionally white activity, because they can't get a decent education for their kids without spending a bundle on a private school. And the scary thing is, that it doesn't seem to matter how good the school district is. No matter what, you tend to find the minorities in the remedial classes.

I went to a very white highschool in the suburbs, but about 5% of the students were Hispanic. The thing was, that you never saw them in class. Then one semester, I decided to take a remedial math class because I was not doing well in the regular class. I discovered two things. First, I discovered where all the Hispanics were. Second, I discovered that the remedial classes were not intended to help the students brush up on their math skills so that they could do more advanced work later. Nope, they were just warehouses where the kids multiplied binomials all semester and never advanced. I had to transfer back to the regular class, more behind than ever. I think I may have been the only student to ever move up from the remedial track. The teacher seemed a bit flumoxed when I asked (demanded, actually) to transfer.

I could ramble on all night about the inadequacies of our public education system, but I won't. I'll just wonder when this is going to break wide open. Someday, they're going to open the doors of those crappy inner-city schools and no one is going to walk through.

Well, I can dream, can't I?