White Children Flee Inner City Public Schools

MSNBC blogger Eric Alterman quotes Jonathan Kozol on the great non-urban comeback in Shame of the Nation, The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America:

p.8 In Chicago, by the academic year 2000-01, 87 percent of public school enrollment was black or Hispanic, less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Washington D.C., 94 percent of children were black or Hispanic; less than 5 percent were white. In St. Luis, 82 percent of children were black or Hispanic; in Philadelphia and Cleveland, 78 percent, in L.A., 84 percent, in Detroit, 95 percent, in Baltimore, 88 percent, In NYC, nearly three-quarters of children were black or Hispanic in 2001.

p.9 A teacher at PS 65 in the Bronx says, “I’ve been at this school for 18 years. This is the first white student I have ever taught.” In that district there were 11,000 children of which only 26 where white meaning a rate of 99.8 percent non-white. Two-tenths of one percent. That’s it.

Those statistics are rather stubborn things.We applaud two well known left-wingers like Alterman and Kozol to dare to tell the truth.