Blaming the Achievement Gap on Anything but the Schools

The explanations that are being given to justify the black-white achievement gap in suburban school districts are disturbing:

When affluent districts show a similar achievement gap, the usual excuses given don’t seem to apply. Students in Clayton, Webster, Parkway, would all come from home environment not associated with poverty. Perhaps, it is a matter of “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

That’s a comment from “taxpayer” on today’s Post-Dispatch article about the achievement gap.

Any reasonable person would agree that skin color alone has no effect on a person’s desire to learn and succeed. If the gap persists even in affluent districts, you have to conclude that that there is some socioeconomic difference between the black and white students — perhaps because minority families are making sacrifices to move to the better districts — or that the schools are not educating everyone equally.

I’m amazed at how reluctant people are to criticize public schools, to the point where they resort to blatant racism rather than admit that public schools systematically produce worse outcomes for some students.