Editorial

A remarkable story

Paratroopers on the ground

After the first official Lincoln-Douglas debate in Ottawa, Ill., (there were a handful of unofficial debates before it) the partisan press published, let's just say, dissimilar reports about which candidate might have prevailed. After Judge Douglas' final rejoinder, the Chicago Press and Tribune said Abraham Lincoln walked off the stage to a cheering crowd, was seized by the multitude, and carried away on the people's shoulders. With 5,000 people shouting for their man, a band led Mr. Lincoln's followers down the streets. Triumph!

The Chicago Times reported the scene . . . in another way. After Stephen Douglas' last comments, the Times reported that three cheers went up from the crowd, but for the incumbent:

"When Douglas had concluded, the shouts were tremendous; his excoriation of Lincoln was so severe, that the republicans hung their heads in shame. The democrats, however, were loud in their vociferation."

Ah, the days of the partisan press, when you could count on news stories to be full of opinion, or full of something. Think CNN or Fox News today, but in paper form. What a country, what a free press, what a First Amendment! Those were the days.

Oh, you can find opinion in the press today, as you have just now. But most of the time the respectable papers try to confine opinion to the opinion pages. Emphasis on "try." Because nobody's perfect. 'Fact, the best opinion in some papers can be found in the news columns (think the New York Times), because the opinion sections are so lacking in opinion.

Then you have magazines on the port or starboard side of politics, or sometimes both or neither, depending on who's editing them this week. May their tribe increase. We do wish, though, that when an opinion hit piece is written in a respectable periodical, it's marked as such and not disguised as a news story, with "facts" that need scare quotes and situations taken completely out of context that provide an incomplete picture.

For example, take the latest issue from the Atlantic. Please.

Apparently a reporter for the magazine parachuted into town recently to talk to folks about how Little Rock's schools have become re-segregated and all the work we've done since the Crisis has been for naught. And those awful charter schools are at least partly to blame.

It was a remarkable story. As in, somebody should remark. Just to set the record straight.

First, the only pro-charter folks the reporter seems to have interviewed were Wal-Mart people. And the tone of the story when they were interviewed, well, you could almost hear the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars when you read the words. As if the Wal-Mart Foundation had anything but good intentions when it funds hundreds of schools across the nation with its (substantial) money.

For an Extra Added Bonus, the Atlantic's story ominously noted that the state took over Little Rock's school district "just a few months after two new members were elected . . . vowing to make the district more equal"--as if those vows were any part of the reason for the takeover. Hey, youse guys at the Atlantic: Failing schools prompted the state takeover. How many months after a school board election is the state supposed to wait before helping the kids? Six months? Twelve months? Another generation?

Here's a strange sentence from the story: "What's stunning about today's methods of avoiding integration [in Little Rock] is that they are, by and large, legal, but they nevertheless leave black students stuck in schools that are separate and unequal."

Where to start? How about here: By and large legal? You mean families with the means to move to Sherwood or Benton or any other suburb are acting, by and large, legally? Or if they somehow win the lotteries to get into charter schools they are acting, by and large, legally? And if grandma can pay for the kids' tuition at private schools, she's acting, by and large, legally?

"But they nevertheless leave black students stuck" in bad schools . . . .

What do you suppose those running charter schools in Little Rock are trying to accomplish? To make schools worse for black kids?

Take eStem, for best example. When was the last time a school opened up in downtown Little Rock? With no football field. (In Arkansas!) With an emphasis on academics. And a waiting list of thousands to get in.

And eStem wants to expand. Not to help just white kids, but all kids, into communities with a high number of African American families. As Casey Stengel said, you can look it up.

If you look at where students at eStem live and note the ZIP codes in which they reside (a lot of work for a parachute reporter, but we've done the math), the numbers reveal that more than 32 percent of them come from lower-income neighborhoods. Something like 27 percent come from places with higher incomes like Pulaski Heights and Chenal and Hillcrest. And another 27 percent from places north of the river from North Little Rock to Jacksonville. Of its 1,462 students, 46 percent are black, 41 percent white and 13 percent other. In other words, the school is not only racially diverse, but economically and geographically diverse, too. And all this happened without a single court order being issued.

How did this happen? Some of us think quality--and equality--have something to do with it.

Of course, a community organizer or something similar with an ACORN-type outfit was quoted in the story. And again said something remarkable: "The fear is that charter schools are a way of sort of mopping up the remaining white students in the public-school district who can't afford to go into private schools."

We wonder if that person is actually keeping up with the debate, or even the facts. For only one example, eStem accepts kids through a lottery system. Nobody can tell what color a child happens to be in that process. And of the 6,000-plus families on the waiting list for that one charter school, two-thirds are African American kids. How in the world is that "mopping up" white kids?

We could go on and on, but space prohibits taking on every misleading or mistaken point in the Atlantic's story. Here's hoping the next time somebody from a national magazine floats in to report on Little Rock's schools, they spend a little more time trying to understand what's going on. Or at least mark their pieces Opinion, and uninformed Opinion at that.

Editorial on 05/04/2016

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