NJ Education Report

Chris Stewart, in “School Choice and the Unlovely Threat to White Progressive Credibility,” describes himself as a former school board member in Minneapolis, a current education activist, and a 45-year old black man who is  dismayed by this “nation of left-leaning opponents of school choice who find every selective pathway for their own children, including use of the most common method, residential privilege, and for urbanites, selective magnets, open enrollment, and political advocacy for enrollment boundaries that create enclaves.”

(Megan McArdle made a similar point a few years ago in describing “ the affluent suburbanite’s need to maintain the delusion that they care about inner city public schools. Memo to suburban voucher opponents who “support public education”: you’re already sending your kid to private school. You’re just confused because your tuition fees came bundled with granite countertops and hardwood floors.”)

Stewart gives one extended example of this ilk, Diane Ravitch, “a salty axe against school choice for years” who “says little about her parents choice for her two brothers. They went to private school when the Great American School System didn’t work out. Further, her grandchildren could have attended schools that need integrating, something she professes to be important, but instead took full advantage of residential privilege which got them into exclusive schools.”

He continues,

As per a 2011 Washington City Paper story, the difference between the posh school Ravitch’s grandchildren will experience is world’s apart from schools just three miles away. 

A grandmother of three, Ravitch is also excited about her youngest grandson enrolling, this September, at P.S. 321 in Park Slope, one of New York’s most coveted neighborhood schools. Some 65 percent of the kids are white; 80 percent meet or exceed state standards in math, English, science, and social studies. The PTA fundraises, via PayPal and employer matching, to support supplemental programs. At P.S. 167 in Crown Heights, less than three miles away, 99 percent of students are black and Hispanic; fewer than half perform at grade-level in math and reading. There is a PTA, but it doesn’t have a PayPal-enabled website.