https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=21c1dc7597
There has been a lot of talk recently about “systemic racism” in the United States. At first, I was skeptical of the term, particularly because those who throw the term around rarely name an example of specific conduct by anyone that intentionally disadvantages blacks. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that there actually are quite a number of instances of major societal institutions engaging in systemic conduct that is clearly known to differentially disadvantage blacks. In every case I can think of, the conduct that systemically disadvantages blacks is a sacred cow of the left promoted for the benefit of some other progressive interest group.
For today, I’ll discuss two of the most clear-cut examples. One has been going on for a long time, while the other is new. Because both involve sacred cows of the political left, the harmful systemic effect on blacks just gets ignored.
Opposition to School Choice
Over the course of the last year or so, the two big national teachers unions (National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers) have been mostly in the news for their advocacy to keep schools closed and kids at home. That’s bad enough, but hopefully will end soon. But then the teachers unions will revert to their previous and perennial priority number one, which is the opposition to school choice — otherwise known as keeping minority kids trapped in failing urban public schools.
Here in New York, charter schools saw major expansion under the strong advocacy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013). But current Mayor de Blasio, who was backed by the teachers union, has done everything in his power to stall and halt the expansion of the charters, and thereby keep as many kids as possible trapped in the failing unionized schools. Moreover, the state legislature, also at the behest of the union, has imposed a cap on the number of charters. That cap has been reached in New York City, meaning that no more charters can open; and the legislature has failed to raise the cap. A charter school advocacy group called the New York City Charter School Center lists 6 new charters ready to open but unable to do so due to the cap. Meanwhile, applications by students to attend the charters exceed available slots by factors of 2:1 in Manhattan and Brooklyn, 3:1 in the Bronx, and 4:1 in Queens.
Data on school performance overwhelming show that the charters wildly outpace the unionized public alternatives. In a post back in 2017 I quoted this statistic from 2016 comparing the regular public schools to Success Academies, one of the top charters:
Test scores released by the state Friday show 94% of Success Academy students passed the 2016 math exam and 82% passed the reading exam. . . . By comparison, 38% of students in traditional public schools met state reading standards this year, up from 30.4% in 2015. And 36.4% of city kids passed math tests in 2016, up from 35.2% in 2015.