Unspoken Truths and North Forest ISD in Houston

Mona Charen is a great columnist.  In her April 3, 2012 column, “If Obama Had a Son” she weaves good research into a solid commentary on problems in the Black community.

1. “…thousands of young blacks are killed every year by other blacks without provoking…outrage…”
2. “…African-Americans, with 12.6 percent of the nation's population, account for 50 percent of the murder victims…”
3. “Among blacks, 72 percent of births are to unmarried women…only 31 percent of couples are married…”
4. “…85 percent of youths in prison come from fatherless homes, as do 80 percent of rapists, 71 percent of high school dropouts, and 63 percent of teen suicides.”
5. “In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote that the ‘relationship (between single-parent families and crime) is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.’”

When I first read this editorial, I admired Charen’s typically meticulous writing, put the article in my book of memories and moved on to the bridge column.  Then, on April 8, I read the second in a five-part series of stories on failing school districts in Texas.  Suddenly, everything in Charen’s article took on new meaning and implication.  

In Texas, as in several other states, non-performing school districts can be taken over by the state and even dismantled and reabsorbed by neighboring districts.  The description of these failing districts makes a depressingly common recipe for failure.  The population is poor, urban and minority.  Less than half the students graduate in four years.  Only about a quarter of the students pass the 9^th grade state exams.  Reading scores, attendance and conduct are rock bottom, but drop-out rates are high.  The teachers are strong on union but weak on technique, effort and training.  Even their attendance is poor.  I was in education for over 30 years and know this scenario far too well.  The names change but the players stay the same.  

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston) called the plans to close the district “the highest level of hypocrisy and racism” but then that is the only phrase Ms. Lee has been schooled in both pronouncing and spelling correctly.  People like Ms. Lee count on an uneducated and welfare dependant citizenry.  That is the only demographic they could possibly keep under their dubious control.  What is more, Ms. Lee would apply the same, “racist” card to the truth about why these schools are failing. 

We can not fix what is wrong with our schools without fixing the homes these schools come from.  No one wants to blame the first, best and most consistent teacher of all children, the parents.  Notice I said, “parents” [plural] because everyone who has raised children knows just how hard a job it is.  There is a reason nature requires two parents to produce a child.  The job is best done by a tag-team match.  We want to blame teachers, administrators, school boards and schools of education—all of whom are accountable and deserve oversight—but no one wants to put the same screws to the parents.  Why?  Because the parents are a large voting bloc and Ms. Lee does not want to incur the wrath of those whom she has cultivated as, “beholding” to her by telling them the truth.   

The truth is that children born to single family homes already have two strikes against them.  Add problems of ignorance, drug use and poverty and you have given that child a barrier that only the truly exceptional can overcome. 

Let’s ask parents to be accountable, too, and keep the faith.