Blacks and whites agree: Virginia's public schools provide equal opportunity
The Washington Post demurs
The Washington Post asked Virginia voters this question: How well do you think Virginia’s public school system provides equal opportunity for students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds?
Before we discuss the results it’s worth wondering why the Post took this survey. My guess is that it hoped the results would embarrass Glenn Youngkin, whom the Post attacks regularly in its local news section. (The front section is reserved for attacks on Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis).
If so, the Post must have been disappointed with what its poll found. Sixty-five percent of the voters surveyed said that Virginia’s schools do “very well” or “somewhat well” in providing equal opportunity to students across racial lines. Fifty-seven percent of blacks answered in one of these same two positive ways.
Unwilling to take “yes” for an answer, the Post’s article about the poll immediately challenges the view of Virginians. The report begins this way:
Despite disparities in student performance, a majority of Virginia voters say they believe the state’s public schools provide equal opportunities for students across racial and income groups, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
Then, in third and fourth paragraphs of its report, the Post moans:
But metrics used to measure student achievement in the state — such as graduation rates and standardized testing scores — show disparities in performance among students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Statewide, about 95 percent of White high school students in the class of 2022 graduated last year, compared with 90 percent of Black students and 83 percent of Hispanic students. Students who were identified as economically disadvantaged at least once in high school had a graduation rate of about 87 percent.
But it’s not Virginia voters who are being obtuse. It’s the Washington Post, in its never-ending demand for “equity,” that’s being willfully ignorant.
The Post didn’t ask Virginians whether they think their public schools produce equal outcomes regardless of race. It asked whether the state’s schools provide equal opportunity.
The distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes is fundamental. The Post ignores it for ideological reasons
The “down-county” high school I attended in the 1960s had lower graduation rates and student achievement (measured by National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists and Ivy League college admissions) than the “up-county” high school my kids would attend many years later. No one ever suggested that the two schools provided different levels of educational opportunity.
Maybe we weren’t quite as smart as those up-county kids. Maybe we were less motivated. In all likelihood, our parents didn’t push us as hard.
Whatever the reason, it wasn’t race. It couldn’t have been. The student bodies of both schools were overwhelmingly white, with virtually no blacks.
In the 1960s, some of the dysfunctional behaviors and attitudes that probably explain disparate student outcomes from neighborhood-to-neighborhood and race-to-race had not yet fully emerged. I’m talking about single-parent (or no-parent) households, the notion that it’s “uncool” or “white” for black males to take school seriously, and the reluctance to enforce school discipline against blacks for fear of being perceived as racist — to give a few examples.
Who can doubt the role of at least some of these factors in racial performance disparities? Apparently, most Virginians don’t.
The Post quotes Virginians who complain that schools in low-income neighborhoods are underfunded. But Washington, DC spends $30,000 per student (more than any state and more than twice as much as Virginia). Yet, only 31 percent of its students are at grade level in reading, and only 22 percent in math. The picture is similar in Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, but you would never know it from reading the Washington Post.
The Post acknowledges Gov. Youngkin’s efforts to invest in literacy programs, as well as his proposal to provide teacher bonuses, including for performance (which the state’s Democrats oppose). It complains, though, that Youngkin has rejected “equity” frameworks in education policy.
Youngkin did this after a review found that “numerous resources within EdEquityVA advance ‘equity,’ which is redefined to mean that there can be no differences or disproportionalities between students — and any difference in what students have or what they achieve is due to systemic racism.”
The Washington Post’s article about its poll indulges in the same leftist fantasy. Its poll results should be accepted — and welcomed. Its analysis should be dismissed.