They want me to tell you a few things, so here goes.
I renounce every critique I’ve ever made about the American public education system. Our public schools are the best in the world if you remove the children who aren’t white. The test scores don’t lie when white kids pass them. Unfortunately, the tests don’t tell us anything meaningful about nonwhite people.
Our nation’s teachers are faultless heroes. Their unions are freedom fighters. If there are racialized outcomes it is because children are too poor to learn, their parents too irresponsible to teach them, and their politicians refuse to provide schools more money to deal with them.
If we really want better outcomes we will split them into small cohorts and send them with extra funds to white schools where they can learn how to be fully human.
I regret having promoted the idea that there was more to the story than that.
Also, can we acknowledge there is only one way to do school? It has to be state-delivered through local school districts with board members selected through low-turnout elections that are dominated by public employee unions. That worked so well before the anti-democratic reformsters started pushing the idea that parents should “vote with their feet” and that their “money follows the child.”
Let’s get back to good. Back to the time when public schools worked for everyone.