Standing in the schoolhouse door

Today's must read comes from John Fund at the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal.

Here's the money quote:

Teacher unions have their own answer to the collapse of public education in the inner cities: ship truckloads of money to poorer districts in the name of "social justice." But many Milwaukee parents aren't buying that. They have painfully learned that more money spent on a failed system does not produce better education. They want to make their own decisions about their children's future.

In the early battles over establishing the Milwaukee program, opponents backed down only when Milwaukee parents began comparing Bert Grover, then the state school superintendent, to George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. The front lines of today's civil rights struggle are not in the South but in Milwaukee.

It happens over and over. Well meaning activists partner with the public school monopoly and refuse to allow children to be educated freely. Instead of fulfilling Dr. King's dream:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

these children are still being judged by their color and not the content of their character. Pres. Bush and his education secretary called it "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

These children can do better if we'd quite assuming that they cannot. Their parents know this, why don't we? Give them the freedom to succeed. Give them the freedom to utilize the education system that suits them. And then--get out of their way.

What excites me about Milwaukee and DC and Cincinnati is that these families are getting their fill. They've realized that their children only have so much time and it cannot be wasted waiting for the promises of others to be fulfilled. They're doing what they must and I wouldn't want to be the one (black or white) standing in the schoolhouse door.