Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

Dropout rates are the proverbial canary-in-the-coal-mine. If ever there was a predictor of poverty, discrimination, abuse, neglect, inability to parent-in short the suffering of an entire generation-it is the lack of experience and education we are affording our minority students. This lack of education is invariably accompanied by lack of not only opportunity, but sustainability. We have a potential generation of students unable to make their way through life independent of government support. The worst crime in a capitalist society is to leave an entire group without the skill set to compete. Perhaps the biggest hurdle to objectively identifying schools that are failing our children is the presumption that schools, by virtue of their mission, are acting in "good faith." In every scenario in which schools' decisions and districts' allocation of funds and energy are analyzed, courts have approached the dilemma from the standpoint that schools and educators act in good faith. After 50 years of inequity, it is indeed safe to say that in order to achieve such disparities in achievement between white and minority groups there must be a complete absence of good faith. There is no other explanation.

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