Friday, June 29, 2007

Blog Mood: Blue
If I were a goofy teenager, I'd type some sad-face emoticons and list my blog-mood as "blue" today because of the heinous decisions coming out of the Supreme Court. All hope that the court hadn't truly swung to the Neolithic is lost. 5-4, 5-4, 5-4, 5-4. That is the new world order. 5-4. Brace yourself, because it's going to get really, really ugly.

For several years, I worked for the Department of Education, including several projects aimed at closing the achievement gap between rich and poor students. Someday I'll write about those experiences but for now it just breaks my heart to see so much good, hard work tossed aside by what is, undeniably, a racist agenda. Of course, desegregation isn't… *sigh* … wasn't perfect. But it absolutely made real progress toward mitigating one of Kentucky's worst problems: the unending cycle of poverty. When a policy is making unsatisfactory progress, you shore it up, you don't abandon it.

Perhaps JCPS is clever enough to find ways to avoid re-segregation in our public schools. If, as it appears today, their hands are tied, you can absolutely count on poor neighborhoods getting poorer. The resources inside public schools will exactly mirror those outside public schools in rich and poor neighborhoods alike. Everything from the pencils and chalk to the teachers and administrators and, more than anyone, the students will suffer. As Justice Stephen Breyer said, "this is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret"

I want my America back. My blog-mood is "blue."

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