“Pastor, have you ever read Thomas Sowell at this high school?” Elaine asked me as we stood outside Paul Laurence Dunbar High School – or Dunbar for short – in Northwest Washington, DC. I told her that was why I had chosen to make Dunbar a stop on my Walk Across America to revive merit and the American Dream. I had asked her, a mother of two children at school, what it was like, and her opinion was unfortunately negative. “Sowell said Dunbar was a model of excellence at the time. What happened?’
From 1870 to 1955, this all-black public school attracted ambitious families from across the country; parents who moved just to register their children for the best chance at life. Sowell described these families as “ambitious,” meaning they tried to overcome all obstacles. They were a determined people, and such people cannot be stopped. The classrooms were full, sometimes overcrowded, but the results were clear. Dunbar graduates scored better on exams than white schools, and almost all went on to college—some to the Ivy League.
Some famous graduates include Jean Toomer, author of “Cane;” Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the first black general in the U.S. Army; and William Hastie, the first black federal judge – along with many others who became doctors, lawyers and artists.
However, the move toward integration after Brown v. Board of Education in the late 1950s ended the parent choice movement—what we today call school choice. Dunbar was no longer open to all of DC, but became a neighborhood school, which mainly attracted students from the immediate area. Worse, the best black students who lived within the school boundaries were often bused to white schools.
BALTIMORE’S POVERTY MACHINE FLOURISHES WHILE THE POOR REMAIN CAPTIVE
Standards plummeted almost immediately. Things were struggling in the 1970s. Elaine told me it just got worse. She would know: She visited Dunbar in the late 1990s. Nowadays, fights break out every week. The football team was recently suspended after a fight while clearing the benches and matches were forfeited. There are metal detectors everywhere, but they are useless against the chaos of unruly children who exhaust many teachers.
The academic grades are even worse. Nineteen percent of students are proficient in reading, and 1% – yes, 1% – are proficient in math. Elaine laughed when I asked why, and told me to guess the pass rate. I guessed: “30%?” No, she said. ‘Seventy percent! They lie to our children, they graduate without any skills or basic competencies.”
Even Barack Obama, who praised Dunbar during his presidency, chose to send his daughters to a $40,000-a-year private school. Elaine has been trying to get her kids into a better school, but hasn’t had much luck in the My School DC lottery: they are waitlisted for different schools.
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“I have to teach my kids every night,” Elaine told me. “We spend hours doing homework, and I don’t make a lot of money from my job as a nonprofit director. But when my kids need tutoring or outside help, I make sure they get it.”
I told Elaine that she sounded like one of those ambitious parents who, according to Sowell, benefited greatly from old Dunbar. “I know!” said Elaine. ‘We had already figured it all out by then. “Now we have this new 2008 school renovation that cost $100 million, and it all looks nice, but where is the substance, the meat on the bones for the kids?”
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Before I left to continue my walk, I asked her where she heard about Sowell. She exclaimed, “YouTube! My college! I typed in ‘school choice’ and it came up. I started looking and then I heard some people talking about his Dunbar story – and that’s when it really hit me. But I want America to know that we still have so many ambitious people here.
We must fix this broken system to free these people so they can perform and excel.”
Amen.
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