If there is too much blur, if there is too much educanto and legalese and excuses, one thing is sure when it comes to school choice and Arkansas' school children: A lot of adults are failing. Miserably.
--Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, last Thursday
And the adults continue to fail Arkansas' school children. And seem to do so every time the Board of Education in this state meets to discuss school transfers.
Late last week, once again, the board denied another handful of kids the opportunity to go to schools they'd much prefer. Can't have competition in education. That might be putting the students' needs before the education establishment's.
But as infuriating as all this has become, the latest batch of denials is even more outrageous.
Take the case of the Coppedge family of Blytheville. State law says kids can transfer to other school districts outside their zone--unless the local school district can provide proof of a Genuine Conflict from a federal court. (That is, more likely than not, a desegregation order.) But the Coppedge family provided the board of education a transcript of a federal court hearing back in 2013 in which the superintendent of the Blytheville district said he didn't know whether the district's attorney in its desegregation case was even alive. That's how old the case is.
Imagine that. School districts using old desegregation cases to keep students from going to better schools. Wasn't the whole point of desegregation to get kids--all kids--into better classrooms? And now, to prevent losing kids to other, perhaps better, schools, front offices are digging up old deseg cases to keep kids (and the state money that follows them) from getting away. What a sham. And a shame.
And, one wonders, how often are those old deseg cases used to deny minority children the opportunity to go to better schools? Good grief. If the old Civil Rights leaders and deseg lawyers could see us now . . . .
Who's going to stand up for these children today? Where are the old lions who once said wrong was wrong and decided to do something about it, even if only to bear witness?
School started this week for most of Arkansas' schools.
Better school might have started down the road a piece. But adults with misplaced priorities stand in the way.
If any good news came from the latest meeting of the state Board of Education--any good news at all, even if just a bit--might have come from the state's education commissioner, Johnny Key.
Commissioner Key said the state's Education Department will begin monitoring districts for their efforts to achieve what the lawyers call Unitary Status from the federal courts. That is, if the districts are really still under deseg orders.
That's a start. Who knows, one day it might keep school districts from rigging the system in their favor. Stranger things have happened.
Editorial on 08/19/2015