Speaking of incremental vs. transformative change, the Wall St. Journal's William McGurn writes about how black and Hispanic children in New York City Public Schools "get the back of the mayor’s hand":
New Yorkers are being presented with two starkly different narratives.
The teachers-union narrative asks the city to celebrate the “success” of a school system in which there is no hint of any challenges. Families for Excellent Schools suggests that “success” is not the word for a school system in which half a million children—478,000 to be precise—languish in failure factories.
These are defined as schools where two-thirds of the students are failing, the city’s most rotten schools. Ninety percent of the kids in these schools are children of color. Families for Excellent Schools calls this system a “pipeline to failure,” noting that a child who starts in a failing elementary school has only a 1.6% chance of ever going on to a top-performing middle school.
Meanwhile, the same mayor who goes around the nation lecturing Americans on the evils of inequality has just informed New Yorkers that their public-school system will see great results . . . in 2026. Not exactly reassuring news for a black mom with, say, a second-grader and a seventh-grader in the public school system. These children need good alternatives now.
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