As Max Eden of the Manhattan Institute and Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute discuss, the combination of the Obama administration and Mayor Bill de Blasio has proved toxic for safety and order in New York City public schools. On top of that, the New York Board of Regents announced this week that it was no longer going to require aspiring teachers there to pass a literacy test.
The reason for this madness is in both instances the same: the felt imperative of getting the numbers right, of getting rid of any standard that might have a “disparate impact” on the basis of race or ethnicity. If discipline standards and literacy requirements disqualify too many African Americans or Latinos, then those standards and requirements have to go.
The losers will be the decent students who must now deal with thuggish classmates and incompetent teachers. And we can’t really label “ironic” the fact that these students will themselves be disproportionately members of the poor and of minority groups, because it is so often the case that the victims of left-wing do-goodism are the poor and particularly the minority poor.
By the way, the Obama administration’s guidance letter on disparate impact and school discipline can be withdrawn anytime the Trump administration likes. Just a gentle suggestion.