WordPress now alerts bloggers to other blog posts with similar content. Sometimes it pulls one out of the past, and sometimes the posts pulled up make one shudder.
Reports last April said Nebraska’s unicameral legislature passed a law that will effectively resegregate Omaha’s school system. Appletree has the story here. How did it turn out? I haven’t found much other news on it.
The news and the figures reported are troubling, regardless the final outcome (and I suspect the motion did not proceed exactly as the version reported). Some of us have long suspected that the anti-education drive, manifested in proposals for charter schools, and especially for vouchers, is simply a masked version of segregation, a way to deprive people of color and people in poverty of a chance for a good education.
One almost wishes Ronald Reagan were still alive to remind these people that, while a rising tide raises all boats, punching holes in the bottom of the boats sinks them, and in a drought, the entire lake goes dry. The best ideals of the United States have been expressed in the drive for almost-free, universally-available primary and secondary education, for nearly 200 years. The U.S. education system remains the model the rest of the world strives to copy. Getting Americans to commit to keeping that system, and keeping it up to date in a world gone flat (see Tom Friedman) is an important political task for the next quarter-century.
Every kid deserves a chance to achieve as much as she or he can. We need to focus more on making that happen, for all kids.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 