The First Goal And Primary

Charity Isn't A Good Substitute For Justice.

As Damaging As The Obsessive Emphasis On Testing Often Proves To Be For Kids In General, I Believe That The Effects Are Still More Harmful In Those Schools In Which The Resources Available To Help The Children Learn The Skills That Will Be Measured By These Tests Are Fewest, The Scores They Get Are Predictably The Lowest, And The Strategies Resorted To By Principals In Order To Escape The Odium Attaching To A Disappointing Set Of Numbers Tend To Be The Most Severe.

If We Allow Public Funds To Be Used To Support Our Relatively Benign, Morally Grounded Schools, We Will Have To Allow Those Public Funds To Be Used For Any Type Of Private School.

But What Is Now Encompassed By The One Word (“school”) Are Two Very Different Kinds Of Institutions That, In Function, Finance And Intention, Serve Entirely Different Roles. Both Are Needed For Our Nation’s Governance. But Children In One Set Of Schools Are Educated To Be Governors; Children In The Other Set Of Schools Are Trained For Being Governed. The Former Are Given The Imaginative Range To Mobilize Ideas For Economic Growth; The Latter Are Provided With The Discipline To Do The Narrow Tasks The First Group Will Prescribe.

The Primary Victims Of Katrina, Those Who Were Given The Least Help By The Government, Those Rescued Last Or Not At All, Were Overwhelmingly People Of Color Largely Hidden From The Mainstream Of Society.