Say Anything Blog

Clarice Feldman, in The American Thinker:

No big surprise here:

The United States Commission on Civil Rights has issued a stunning report, coming after decades of wasting countless millions on busing children away from neighborhood schools, destruction of (mostly urban) school systems, and consistent parental opposition to racial jiggering of public education systems.

[...]

The study was limited to elementary and secondary education. One wonders if by some miracle the results would be different at the college level. I rather doubt it.

[...]

Specifically, the Commission finds that “there is little evidence that racial and ethnic diversity in elementary and secondary schools results in significant improvements in academic performance; studies on the effect of school racial composition on academic achievement often suggest modest and inconsistent benefits.” Similarly, the Commission notes that “studies of whether racial and ethnic diversity result in significant social and non-educational benefits report varied results.” Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds commented that “the academic literature really provides little or no support for the view that racial preferences in student assignment serve any compelling interest. In my view, the evidence, suggests that these preferences do not provide significant academic benefits to minority children that would compensate for the moral costs of government’s use of racial classifications.”

Read the whole thing, including the original article, which is linked in this article.

I have been an advocate of performance evaluations for all govt social programs, with cutting or eliminating non-working or horrendously unproductive programs a possibility. It is simply a necessity for ethical and moral govt activity. If they are going to confiscate our money, they should prove that it accomplishes something other than enriching the political class.