Public Support of Private Schools

Yesterday, the Frederick News Post carried a couple of articles on the effort of private schools, including parochial schools, to get increased aid from the state for non-religious matters, specifically books, and other logistical items. To help, the first article talks about efforts to get a tax credit for businesses to make contributions to private and public schools. The proposal would allow for business to take a 75 percent tax credit up to $3 million for donations to private schools and up to $2 million for public schools. Similar bills have been introduced in the past but have suffered from a negative report from the General Assembly's budget committees. No wonder, unlike a deduction, a tax credit is a dollar for dollar reduction of your taxes. A deduction generally lowers your taxable income. If implemented in a tough budget year, the cost could be significant to the state, so I would not expect a positive report out of the budget committees.

Appearing the same day thought was the second article about a talk by secular humanist Edd Doerr, who argued before a very small crowd, that the state should get out of the business of supporting private schools, even in the small ways of books and transportation services. Last year, the state "subsidy" of private schools in Maryland was between $4 and $5 million-out of a several billion dollar education budget. In short pennies on the dollar.

As Doerr argued:

Doerr discussed some of the issues he has with the operation of private schools that should preclude them from public funding.

"Public schools educate all children and private schools selectively pick and choose," he said. "They filter out lower social level kids; they want the kids who are going to go to college; they don't want the kids who look like they might cause trouble; and they don't much care about handicapped kids."

Public schools are limited in number and based upon population, but anyone or any organization can create a private school.

"If we're forced to support the proliferation of private schools, the cost of education will go up and the quality will go down," Doerr said.

I am not seeing a "proliferation" of private schools, but assuming there is one, what about the rights of the taxpayers who also pay private school tuition. Let's assume that private schools filter our "lower social level kids" (read poor, black, and/or Hispanic kids) despite strong evidence to the contrary for many schools, then that means rich white kids and their parents not only pay for tuition at private schools but also pay taxes (which by definition poor people don't). Why can't those people who are paying taxes ask for a portion of their tax bill to go to their private school.

Oh, I know why, because the govnerment and only the government gets to determine how to spend your tax money. Silly me and stupid Doerr.

But not all private schools are bastions of rich white snobbery. Catholic schools are run by the Catholic Church and most are located in urban areas, serving a student body that is usually poor, black and Hispanic--although not uniformly so.

Doerr is entitled to his belief, but his charges of racism of private schools and plundering of the govenrmental coffers is ludicrous. Public payments to private schools for books has a long history in our country as well as legislative, executive and oh, yeah Supreme Court support. So it is the custom and the law of the land. After all, rich white, private school attending kids also have rights.

Resegregation of U.S. Schools Deepening

The story appearing in the Christian Science Monitor breathlessly cries

At one time, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina was a model of court-ordered integration.

Today, nearly a decade after a court struck down its racial-balancing busing program, the school district is moving in the opposite direction. More than half of its elementary schools are either more than 90 percent black or 90 percent white.

"Charlotte is rapidly resegregating," says Carol Sawyer, a parent and member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Equity Committee.

It's a trend that is occurring around the country and is even more pronounced than expected in the wake of court cases dismantling both mandated and voluntary integration programs, a new report says. The most segregated schools, according to the report, which documents desegregation trends, are in big cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The South and West – and rural areas and small towns generally – offer minority students a bit more diversity.

Suburbs of large cities, meanwhile, are becoming the new frontier: areas to which many minorities are moving.

These places still have a chance to remain diverse communities but are showing signs of replicating the segregation patterns of the cities themselves.

Once again, even a reputable paper like the CSM gets things wrong.

Segregation, as it referred to in the landmark Brown v. Board case, which led to Charlotte-Mecklenburg's forced busing system, was about de jure segregation, that is segration by law. What is happening now is de facto segregation, segregation that is occuring for reasons other than a law that mandates a separation of the races.

The type of de facto segreation that is occuring now is the product of so many different influences it is hard to describe them all, but it boils down to a couple of key points-- housing costs, economics and choice. The fact is that the neighborhoods of Charlotte and other urban areas are themselves less racially diverse and since we still have, and will continue to have neighborhood schools, the schools have slowly become less racially diverse than in the past. People instinctively choose to live next to those that are most like them, which means they choose to live in neighborhoods where they have the most in common with their neighbors, including racial characteristics, education, background, employment, etc. That the schools are not fully segregated tells us that there are no legal mandates for racially segregated schools, but that there are economic and social forces at work that are creating de facto segregation.

So what is the solution? There is none. Sure, urban schools could continue to bus kids across town, but when parents and communities are demanding neighborhood schools, you can't have a neighborhood school whose population is different than the population of the community. But to truly "re-integrate" the schools, you would have to re-integrate the population, which as pointed has segregated itself based on social and financial strata. Forcing a change in housing patterns and social problems creates even more issues for the govnerment and social engineering has been notoriously unsuccessful.

Another, often overlooked, factor when talking about Brown v. Board, and desegration is that at its heart the argument that Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP were making was a question of resources, not necessarily integration. The blacks only schools received a far lesser share of the economic and professional resources of a geographic area. Marshall and the NAACP figured the only way to address that funding and resource gap was to do away with segregation, so that all schools would receive the same level of resource.

Today, a funding gap still persists in some areas, but in other areas of the country, the funding gap actually runs counter to what you might believe. A recent Education Trust report, The Funding Gap, actually indicates that some urban districts in Maryland, Ohio and Wyoming now provide more funding to high poverty schools than to other schools.

On the surface, the so-called resegregation of our schools seems like a real problem. The solution may not be more laws or voluntary integration plans, but more options for the education of our children. Be it charter schools, magnet schools, exchange programs, private scholarship programs or any combination of options, giving more choices will lead to better integration of schools. The one thing that should be avoided at all costs is any government invervention, it always makes things worse.

Charlotte Mayor Tells Truth and Won't Apologize for It

Charlotte, North Carolina Mayor Pat McCrory has my vote, assuming of course I could vote in Charlotte. La Shawn Barber has the story:

Whenever I hear a man apologize for telling the truth because some idiotic group puts pressure on him, I want to vomit.

But I won’t be retching today.

Pat McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, wrote that too many black youth were imitating the gangster lifestyle in their behavior and dress, a true statement. (Charlotte Observer) McCrory noted that 60 percent of Charlotte’s gang members are black.

A local chapter of the long irrelevant NAACP was in an uproar over the statement. The president of the local branch said McCrory had painted “African American youth with a broad swath that cuts deep in many of our communities” and “demanded” an apology. McCrory has refused. Why?

“Because my comments were accurate. Period,” he said.

That’s a gentlemanly way of saying, “Kiss my a**.”

Too many black “youth” eschew education and decent living, while embracing a lifestyle that glorifies criminal activity, triflingness (yes, there’s such a word), and having illicit and zero-responsibility sex with as many women as possible. The resultant children are sentenced to fatherless homes and instability. That, too, makes me sick to my stomach.

But daring to name a thing is worst than being the thing, in this twisted society.

Blacks cannot complain about what white people may or may not be doing to them when they don’t even care about their own children. I’ve lost patience with it, and I advise everybody — no matter what color you are — to stop being afraid of the truth or of black people making demands. Take it from an insider: the bark, as loud and annoying as it is, is much worse than the bite.

Like Barber, I hope McCrory doesn't back down.

Simply put, we need leaders like McCrory who are unafraid of the facts and unapologetic about bringing those facts to light. If only more elected leaders were like McCrory.

The Skin Color of Criminals

La Shawn Barber asks, why is it that the skin color of suspected criminals is not important to the reporters at teh Michigan Daily, the school newspaper of the University of Michigan:

So why do liberal journalists go out of their way not to report a thug’s race? Are they uncomfortable with disproportionate crime rates among blacks? Are they embarrassed by it or afraid that some loud-mouth “civil rights” type will charge “Racist!”? Discomfort and embarrassment aside, isn’t it a reporter’s job to report facts? That two at-large armed robbers are black is a fact that needs to be reported. People in the community need to be on the look-out. Omitting race as a descriptor is irresponsible, PC be damned.

In another irritating episode of men-in-their-thirties style coverage, the University of Michigan’s college newspaper, The Michigan Daily reports that a man was mugged at gunpoint near campus by two men, described as “average build, about six feet tall and wearing black hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up.” Check it out: a story that includes the color of the gun — a black handgun — omits the color of the robbers.

(According to the Department of Public Safety, the suspects are black. The Michigan Daily had access to the alert, so the reporter knew the race of the suspects when she wrote the story.)

At this point in our warped society, are we simply to assume that all such criminals are black? Is the omission of race code for “black”? Whatever the practice is or isn’t, it’s certainly dumb.

An excellent question.

Justice Secures His Place as a Critic of Integration - New York Times

Justice Clarence Thomas is practically an enigma to many people. The Justice, who in 16 years on the Supreme Court, has rarely, if ever, asked a question during oral arguments, continues to puzzle just about everyone. But people rarely puzzle about Thomas on the vast majority of the Supreme Court's docket. From his reliably conservative, some would say reactionary, views on the First Amendment to his opinions on business cases and other non-constitutional cases, Thomas evokes almost no reaction beyond "Well, he is a conservative Justice." But when it comes to race cases, many people just can't seem to understand Justice Thomas.

When Justice Clarence Thomas provided a pivotal vote last month as the Supreme Court struck down school integration plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, he suggested the concept of integration was inherently demeaning to black children because it implied they needed to mix with whites to achieve excellence.

His comments, including his description of people who promote integration as faddish theorists, demonstrated anew his place as the most influential black voice criticizing the value of integration and affirmative action plans. But as Justice Thomas is also the most intensely scrutinized personality on the court, his comments inevitably raise questions about much his legal views are shaped by the difficulties of his own experience with race and education.

Justice Thomas’s recent opinion on integration has provided fresh material for the rich debate about him among black scholars for whom he has been a fascinating and vexing subject since he was narrowly confirmed to the court in 1991.

As is discussed later in the New York Times article, Thomas's opinion is nothing new for the conservative Justice. He has long blasted affirmative action programs and race based decision making, even as his critics complain that his position on the Court is a result of race based decision-making.

Thomas' memoir is due out later this year and I for one look forward to reading it, but it may disappoint people looking for an insight into why he feels the way he feels on cases of race.

Diversity Policies--A Human Oregano?

George Will turns a wonderful phrase when dealing with racial "diversity" policies. Exmaining the K-12 diversity cases handed down by the Supreme Court last week, Will asks:

How did we get from this:

"Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere" (the NAACP's brief, written by Thurgood Marshall, in the
1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case), to this: Local public education establishments routinely taking cognizance of race in assigning children to schools?

How indeed. By having rich white people make determinations about what is good or not good for children's education.

[Justice Stephen] Breyer said that last week's decision abandons "the promise of Brown." Actually, that promise -- a colorblind society -- has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the Equal Protection Clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful.

This repulsive practice merits Clarence Thomas' warning in his opinion concurring with last week's ruling: Beware of elites eager to constitutionalize "faddish social theories." Often, they are only theories.

As Roberts said, Seattle and Louisville offered "no evidence" that the diversity they have achieved (by what he has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race") is necessary to achieve the "asserted" educational benefits.

Evidence is beside the point. The point for race-mongering diversity tinkerers is their professional and ideological stake in preventing America from achieving "a colorblind mentality."

As I have hinted at before, "diversity" is a creation of a majority who feels guilty for being a majority and for the majority's past, even when they themselves had nothing to do with that past. Diversity is designed to make good on prior societal ills (read assuage my racial guilt) and not to actually improve education.

As I noted earlier, the Seattle/Louisville cases are really an extension of the results in Brown,

Bakke

and Grutter cases, that invididual rights mean something and that these decisions are not a conservative backlash, but a continuation of the Brown case and the diversity cases are

actually a continuation of th[e Brown] Court's focus on individual rights. If the Warren Court was about raising up the rights of the minority and downtrodden in our society, the Rehnquist and now Roberts Court's are as much about enforcing the Warren concept of equal rights for everyone as any decision of Earl Warren and his peers. If the liberals have spent decades trying to show that everyone should have the same rights, then everyone has the same rights and it is up to the Courts to respect those rights.

What seems to be missing from the liberal argument about the diversity cases is the realization that racial discrimination is perpetuated by the left's continuing insistence to look at minorities not as individuals, with individual needs and rights, but as "human oregano," a spice to be added to their view of a proper program of education.

Liberals, The Supreme Court and the 2008 Election

The recent close of the Supreme Court's term has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the nation's liberals. As the New York Times' Robin Toner writes:

There is no doubt about the unhappiness of liberals with the current court, which now bears Mr. Bush’s unmistakable imprint. They were reeling last week as the court finished up its first full term with Mr. Bush’s appointees, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. It was a session marked by a sharp turn to the right in a series of 5-to-4 decisions, from upholding a federal ban on a type of abortion to limiting school districts’ ability to use racially conscious criteria to achieve or maintain integration.

Of course, for most liberals, the bitter taste is the fact that most of them think Chief Justice John Roberts lied to them about his respect for precendent, his plan to not overreach or try to legislate from the Bench. Of course, one's personal outlook tends to taint how one looks at the Supreme Court action. The Court had a number of difficult cases this year, fraught with various political overtones.

Since the Warren Court era, liberals have viewed the Courts as relatively friendly turf to the advancement of their agenda and largely they were successful at that time not because the Courts were full of liberals, but because their agenda was focused on individual rights. At a time when the Nation was coming to grips with how poorly we treated some classes of individuals, with the memory of the Holocaust, among other things, fresh in our minds, the Warren Court and the liberal legacy of FDR appointments to lower courts, we had a judiciary that was perhaps more intently focused on individual rights and liberties than at any other time in history. But during the Burger Court and Rehnquist Court eras, there came a time when the Judiciary began to look at how the law had been injured by individual rights. Certainly, individual rights still play an important role in the judicial process, but the courts since the Warren era have looked long and hard at the government's role in those rights and not surprisingly, the government's role in promoting the rights of some groups has an arguably adverse impact on the rights of other groups. In a sense the "conservative backlash" to the Warren Era is actually a continuation of that Court's focus on individual rights. If the Warren Court was about raising up the rights of the minority and downtrodden in our society, the Rehnquist and now Roberts Court's are as much about enforcing the Warren concept of equal rights for everyone as any decision of Earl Warren and his peers. If the liberals have spent decades trying to show that everyone should have the same rights, then everyone has the same rights and it is up to the Courts to respect those rights.

What is noteworthy, as Toner points out, is that Liberals are starting to get the message about a judiciary that can be perceived as hostile to their agenda.

In other words, liberals were often warning about potential dangers to their agenda from a changing Supreme Court. The issue was not a hypothetical for conservatives, who felt devastated, over the years, by decisions from previous courts, most notably Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case declaring a constitutional right to abortion.

Now, some Democrats and their allies say they are hearing hypothetical worries turn to outrage, and not just in the Democratic cloakroom of the Senate. “The right has always been energized on this issue,” said Mr. Schumer. “The recent decisions have now energized the left.”

The liberal outrage over the most recent term of the Supreme Court is not as much about the decisions of the Court, as it is about the realization by the left that resorting to the Judiciary to advance their agenda is a poor strategic and tactical choice. The Roberts Court will provide some fodder for the 2008 elections, but I am not sure that the impact long term on the Court will be that much.

Want to End Racial Segragation Today--End Residential Segregation

So suggests Ed Whelan.

If, as the Washington Post tells us (in an editorial that is nearly as bad as the New York Times’s), racial balancing plans in public schools are needed “to overcome patterns of residential segregation,” why not directly attack the disparate racial composition of America’s neighborhoods? Why should America’s adults make America’s children bear the burden of long bus rides? Why not instead require that all neighborhoods reflect the racial composition of their broader metropolitan area? Why do we continue to tolerate the invidious freedom of Americans to self-“segregate” by choosing where they wish to live?


Under the logic of Justice Breyer’s dissent, there’s surely a compelling interest in “setting right the consequences of prior conditions of [residential] segregation,” which were long bolstered by race-restrictive covenants in deeds. And so long as the racial residential quota in a neighborhood has broad outer bounds, it would be narrowly tailored. Forced exchanges of property—accompanied by just compensation, of course—would serve a public purpose within the meaning of the Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo. What better way to fulfill (in Breyer’s words) “the promise of true racial equality—not as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nation’s cities and schools”?

Why not indeed?