Skip to main content

Does a flower turn to the sun?

I tend not to address points raised by people commenting on posts. In the back-and-forth of such discussions, people sometimes say things they don't mean or take extreme positions. In other cases they are just trying to be provocative, especially when they can remain anonymous.

But a discussion on Greg Mankiw's blog caught my attention. That's because a couple of the folks suggested that parents don't really have the knowledge to make decisions about the quality of schools.

Between 2002-2004 I was actively involved in the fight to get school vouchers for families in DC. I often heard the argument that parents don't know how to choose between good and bad schools and that, anyway, parents had enough choices with the school system's "out-of-boundary" options and charters (that had also been opposed).

Without getting too deep into the out-of-boundary program, I'll point out that Woodrow Wilson HS, considered one of the best schools in the city, received 520 applications from parents out of the school's zone. That is even though it had ZERO available spaces for students to transfer to the school and parents KNEW there would be few spaces available. Deal Junior High, a feeder school for Wilson, had 532 applications, but only ten openings.

At the same time, D.C. parents shunned the low achieving schools. Anacostia Senior High School had 80 spaces available, but only seven applicants. Ballou SHS had 220 available spaces, but only three applicants. In 2002, fewer than 800 of the 7,000 children who applied for out-of-boundary spots were granted permission, mainly because many of the available slots are in low-performing schools (the same problem hindering NCLB). From my on-the-ground conversations with parents, visits to schools, going door-to-door in neighborhoods, based on community meetings I attended and speeches I gave, parents were quite aware of the level of violence and the level of achievement in the schools.

The main point is, based on what I wrote above: intellectuals, experts, and politicians greatly underestimate the knowledge and information that parents have about schools.


Families at a Washington Scholarship Fund orientation meeting, April 2004



Families at a Washington Scholarship Fund school fair, June 2004

CJL
See also Jeffrey Alan Miron, Edspresso, Carnival of Education!, The Voice for School Choice, Education Week,

Popular posts from this blog

Walter E. Williams hosting Rush Limbaugh tomorrow

Check your local listings! By the way, my co-host Eliot Morgan and I interviewed Professor Walter E. Williams on the Casey Lartigue Show on April 28 and June 9 . We discussed reparations for slavery and the minimum wage mandate. To access the clips above at rapidshare: 1) scroll down to the bottom, hit the "free" button. 2) scroll down to the bottom, type in the password, hit download, then listen... Or, you can download the clips from yousendit, available for one week: June 9, WEW, segment 5 http://download.yousendit.com/F8A128C94CEAD09C June 9, WEW segment 6 http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=9800ABE6204647B3 April 28 http://download.yousendit.com/72FB5F4718BC06A1 CJL

Park Jin welcoming remarks to FSI (and Casey Lartigue)

  National Assembly member Park Jin makes the welcoming remarks at FSI's conference featuring North Korean diplomats. Park Jin | Greeting message to FSI and Casey Lartigue mention - YouTube

Forgery or conspiracy? Memorandum 46

Here's an article I co-wrote that will appear in the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post . We'll be updating this page over the coming days. So check back for updates. Memorandum 46 timeline , as compiled by us. Audio from our last show on XM 169 before we got fired. That audio is divided into segments, this one is one large MP3 . Who says Memorandum46 is true? Former rep. Cynthia McKinney presents Memo 46 to the United Nations and defends it in a speech . Joe Madison presents Memo 46 at the annual Congressional Black Caucus gathering. Former D.C. delegate Walter Fauntroy, on the Joe Madison show on XM 169 (audio available, upon request) and on Michael Fauntroy's site Boyd Graves (see Exhibit 10 of his lawsuit against the government) The Final Call, with Brzezinski's name misspelled . Len Horowitz Blackelectorate.com Millions for Reparations Various discussion forums or discussants, such as: Greekchat , Jahness , Who says Memorandum 46 is a forgery? Brzezi

2020-05-21 Goodbye, Katty Chi

I had heard through the grapevine and now it has been verified: Human rights activist Katty Chi has passed away. She is one of the first people that I met when I got involved in this cause. The first time was in 2012, at an event at the South Korea's National Assembly. She was super cool, one of my favorites as I used to say even when she was alive. And that is the important time to say such things, when people are alive. Whenever we met, I would say to her, "You know what happens when you meet me?" She would say, "Yeah. Time to take a photo?" I'm glad we did. And from Hyun S. Song, a close colleague of hers: And from Liberty in North Korea, the definitive announcement, August 4, 2020

2018-03-08 Challenge Korea Global Award

  I am so proud to be the recipient of the Challenge Korea Global Award. Today I attended the awards ceremony, held at South Korea's National Assembly. It is quite an honor. There are about 50 million people in South Korea, about 2 million of them are non-Koreans. Out of all of those people, I was one of the 10 people to receive an award today (the Global Award). I'm not a celebrity, singer, actor, politician or rich man. I am just a man struggling to build an NGO in a foreign country empowering North Korean refugees. These days, I rarely leave my office, so I'm not getting this kind of award because of networking. It is the second consecutive year that I've won an award, and last month TNKR (now FSI) was honored as a finalist for the Asia Liberty Award. Incredibly, we have received a lot of press even though we don't have anyone focused on reaching out to media. We get this kind of attention because of our good work. I'm not sure that I really deserve this awar