Black Backlash

Blacks in inner cities who have had enough of public schools are discovering they have other ways of escaping than through the vouchers that mostly white public officials are trying so desperately to curtail or control. “There was no significant difference between minority and white homeschooled students,” according to the Home School Legal Defense Association. “For example, in grades K-12, both white and minority students scored, on the average, in the 87th percentile.”

“In math, whites scored in the 82nd percentile while minorities scored in the 77th percentile.” So much for the “achievement gap” that both liberal supporters of the status quo and conservative architects of No Child Left Behind are trying so desperately to erase.

“Between 110,000 and 140,000 African-American children in grades K-12 were homeschooled in the 2005-2006 school year, the only year for which hard figures are available,” according to Daschell M. Phillips, writing in New Coalition News and Views.

“White public school eighth grade students, nationally, scored in the 58th percentile in math and the 57th percentile in reading,” according to the HSLDA. “Black eighth grade students, on the other hand, scored on the average at the 24th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading.”

“Hispanics scored at the 29th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading.”

Parents at the Interdistrict Downtown School in Minneapolis may want to think about homeschooling.

“On September 15, Interdistrict Downtown School teacher Peter Sage was reading a book to his second-grade class called Asha’s Mums, selected from the school’s ungrammatically titled ‘Families all matter’ diversity curriculum,” Gary Bauer of American Values reports. “The story concerns a young girl with, well, ‘two moms.’”

“Sage then explained to his class of seven-year-olds about society’s reactions to different kinds of people, comparing those who disagree with homosexuality with racists who ‘believed black people are stupid.’” The black parents of the seven-year-olds in attendance angrily, and quite understandably, objected. Officials from the school, which bills itself as “an innovative voluntary desegregation magnet school serving students from eleven metro area school districts,” essentially told the parents to suck it up.

“FeLicia McCorvey Preyer, who has second-grade twins at the school, was also incensed about ‘Families All Matter,’” Katherine Kersten reported in the Minneapolis StarTribune. “Before the school year began, she told Sage and school officials that she didn’t want her children reading books with homosexual themes, she says.”

“They knew my wishes and they defied them,” Preyer told Kersten. The parents should consider responding in kind.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.