Ever since Ward Connerly took his anti-race preferences campaign to Michigan, certain groups in the state have been determined to maintain the status quo (lowered standards for blacks; higher standards for everyone else), spending untold amounts of money fighting Proposal 2. Given the abysmal high school graduation rate among blacks in Michigan, the money would have been and still could be better spent dealing with the disparity. Their battle against fair standards is a lost cause, so say state and federal courts and the Supreme Court.
John Rosenberg at Discriminations links to a study called the Alliance For Excellent Education, which analyzed high school graduation rates for the 50 states. The graduation rate for whites in Michigan (PDF) is 73 percent. For blacks, it’s 32 percent. That’s no typo. The graduation gap is 43 percent.
But what do University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman, The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, and other vapid groups choose to spend time, money, and energy doing? Trying to crush a law passed by 58 percent of the voters that bars the state government from treating people differently based on the color of their skin. Instead of dealing with disparities like graduation rates, grades, and scores, they seem to want disparities to remain so that race preferences are necessary in order to meet some arbitrary race quota, education be damned.
It’s disgusting, and they all should be ashamed.
Sort of Unrelated Update: D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, whose impending takeover of D.C. Public Schools will enrich his friends, already is messing up the plan. His aides plagiarized from Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system’s plan. (Source)
Remember, these are appointees “earning” high salaries, paid for by taxpayers. This is an administration that claims it can make better decisions for government school children than the school board. Yet, they’re ignorant of basic attribution. And original expression.
With one of the nation’s highest per pupil expenditures, the D.C. government school system is still a joke. Can Fenty and friends turn things around? Put it this way, they can’t do much worse. Good luck with that takeover!
