Accuracy in Media

A really good op-ed by a professor at American University:

“In our economically segregated society, ZIP code does matter. It is an excellent average predictor of how easy it is for a school to educate a child. The mechanism for this correlation is the physical and psychological damage of growing up in poverty, which leaves large numbers of alienated and disruptive students in the classroom. These students have the power to make everyone’s education impossible.”

“Middle-class families have been moving out of poor neighborhoods since racial housing restrictions eased. Among those who remain, there is a concentration of unemployable female heads of household who lose control of their children’s behavior in elementary school and in many cases never regain it.”

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