I am not against spending more money, wisely, on early education programs, and on teaching kids in poor neighborhoods how to learn effectively. We should be looking at starting kids out effectively, as opposed to trying to catch them up artificially later. What I am against is throwing money into systems that have proven to be ineffective in reaching so many kids in poor and minority neighborhoods.
Until we do this, we will be forced into choices that are bad, worse, and worst. Affirmative Action is the worst "solution", because it is not a solution. It should have been a bandage, but it became a cast, and eventually turned into a crutch. My brother is in a civil service position, and he has worked his way up the ranks throughout the years. Fortunately he has not been passed over for promotions, because he has had exceptional scores on his tests for promotion, and has consistently scored at the top of his various groupings. However, he is immediately at a disadvantage against any minority, including Black people, Hispanic people, women, and so on. His score is immediately behind their scores before a single question has been answered.
I want the most qualified people possible in jobs that affect my life. I want the best possible people in jobs that my tax dollars pay for. This is not what always happens though. Improve the teaching as opposed to artificially inflating the results. That is how you get lasting, and meaningful change.
You're right. AA is a crutch and a cast. That means it'll take decades to fix. Bones don't heal over night, they take time. AA is trying to fix a 250+ year problem, it's hard to judge how effective it is in 50 years.
The way we funded schools was through property tax (I think we still do, but I also thought the Ohio SC said that was illegal a few years ago.) The best neighborhoods got the best schools and then people moved into the schools with the best neighborhoods and the cycle continued. However, many minorities were blackballed from neighborhoods in both the North, South, Midwest and West. This led to them being forced to live in bad neighborhoods and bad school districts. Because of this they received poor education and ended up being poor. While I would love to "fix" schools, there's no real simple way to do it. And the techniques employed by the best educators in the World would never be used here.
Hence AA. I've always seen AA as a way to help those who came from worse school districts to have the same playing field as top notch school districts. This would then get them away from the cycle of poverty. So far, I think it's doing pretty great, but AA has never been as effective or ineffective as Politicans would have us believe.
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