The American Civil Rights Foundation (ACRF) has dropped a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after it dropped a race-based teacher assignment and transfer policy as part of a settlement. (Source)
Ward Connerly, spokesman for ACRF and president of the American Civil Rights Institute, said the race-based practice “grossly shortchanges the taxpayers, not to mention our students, when teachers are assigned on the basis of race, gender, and ethnic politics rather than competence. This legal settlement and the merit-based teaching that it encourages in the LAUSD are major benefits of Proposition 209.”
Considering that LAUSD’s practice was blatantly illegal, and the state is strapped for cash, it makes sense LAUSD decided to settle.
The ACRF may want to look into the Berkeley school district’s burgeoning effort to close the achievement gap and to improve relations between “mostly white and middle-class teachers and administrators” and minority parents and students. The worrywarts apparently believe black and Hispanic students perform poorly because there’s a subcultural* chasm between them and their white teachers. (Why not blame it on the rain, too?)
If that’s the case, how do they account for Hispanics performing better than black students? Is the subcultural chasm between whites and Hispanics, whose first language may or may not be English, narrower?
Race-based government policy supporters need to ask themselves such questions. Instead of comparing blacks with whites, compare blacks with Hispanics. Compare Hispanics with Asians, or blacks with Asians, specifically low-income Asians. Compare whites with Asians. Something, beyond having mostly white teachers and administrators, is afoot.
*We are part of the American culture. Groups within this culture with distinctive traits are subcultures.
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