I worked for a county school system in an administrative role. My philosophy is that most of the time smart/students with a supportive home life will do well in most situations. I have a similar opinion about students in the opposite categories doing poorly. There is also a group that stretches across the entire student population (including all ethnicities) where you can move the needle and it is mostly comprised of smart people without a supportive home life and anyone on the bubble in those categories.

Also, a pet peeve of mine is when race issues are made out of economic issues. It can be hard for a school system to face the reality that they cannot change the economic situations of the students by feeding them 2 (awful) meals per day and penalizing students that are well off.

That said, it may be reasonable to use race as a proxy but it comes with a lot of baggage and some of that baggage is that you are failing a race. I would love to see that they have done some studies and will be using the money from the advanced learning classes to move the needle on a larger group but the article is written as if they are taking punitive measures in an attempt to close the gap.

I believe that black and hispanic students are not being served well by the way this school system appears to be approaching the situation. I hope they eventually face some facts. We spent a long time focusing resources on hopeless students and just about as long on students who will succeed regardless of attention. Lets spend some time on those who are reachable and I think we will see blacks and hispanics better represented as a side effect.

I believe there are black and hispanic students who are not doing well in school that may develop great ideas and plans for the future due to their education. I want to live in a world shaped by those ideas. The first step is grabbing the low hanging fruit and not casting this as a fight between races. Its so easy to make this a reason to get along that I am suspicious of people who make it a reason to divide people further.