In a brilliant maneuver to change the subject from health care, the President announced that he was going to start talking about reforming President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

The premise of NCLB is that if a school is failing to deliver real results for students, that it stops getting financial aid from the federal government.  NCLB is not very popular with school administrators or labor unions because they don’t like the idea that their jobs hinge on the performance of a bunch of kids that may have very little interest in learning in the first place.

That is a valid criticism, because sometimes the problem is not with the teachers.  Sometimes the problem starts with the students.  Okay, that is not exactly fair.  Sometimes the problems start with what the students are being taught by their parents (or in many cases, their parent).

In a fascinating story that appeared in the American Enterprise Institute’s magazine, “Are Some Races More Equal Than Others?”, written by Abigail Thernstrom and Tim Fay, the authors highlight a persistent problem in American urban schools, racial discrimination.  And this is not the kind of racial discrimination that civil rights activists usually like to talk about.  This is the kind of discrimination where black kids target Asian kids with actual violence in schools in Philadelphia — and I am certain — in other places.  Read more...