OPINION:
African American educators are pushing the panic button following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the use of affirmative action in college admissions (“Allowing everyone to compete on an equal plane,” web, July 3).
But they shouldn’t be, because while the program was intended to give a boost to poor students, it turned into a tool for the exclusive advancement of students of a specific race who had poor academic showings.
Affirmative action became a camouflage for the failures of the National Education Association and state and local school boards to improve and expand curricula to develop students enough for acceptance at any college or university based on merit.
As a high school student in the 1980s, I was denied access to certain college prep and advanced classes. My school had failed to expand those classes, and as a result I lost all interest in school, and my grades went from A’s to D’s.
Then-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in 1996, “We expect that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”
Unfortunately, for that to happen, the expansion of the more advanced curricula fell well short of what was needed — despite increased funding per student. This was mostly because the Department of Education’s unproven approaches to achievement were being forced on the teachers (i.e., standardized testing).
It is not just the schools that have hindered kids. Lack of parental involvement in students’ academic careers has also been detrimental, as has the lack of access to private and charter schools, which has forced students to endure poor learning environments.
Now that the Supreme Court has removed the protective shield of incompetence, it is time to fulfill Mrs. O’Connor’s and Martin Luther King Jr.’s goals of removing all the barriers restricting student learning and pushing more merit-based achievements in advanced math, science and English curricula.
GREG RALEIGH
Washington
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