Ricci and Real Opportunity Through Education

Dan Lips / July 01, 2009

Writing in Forbes yesterday, the Goldwater Institute’s Clint Bolick argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ricci v. DeStafano should result in renewed attention to education reform and the need to improve educational opportunities for all people:

“[The ruling] also brought the nation closer to an important day of reckoning. When blacks and Hispanics flunk examinations, the cause is less likely to be discrimination than the appalling educational conditions to which most economically disadvantaged black and Hispanic children are consigned. “Affirmative action” programs that leap-frog less-qualified minorities over more-qualified non-minorities sweep those systemic problems under the carpet. As such, race-based affirmative action programs perpetuate fraud upon the very groups they are designed to help. The fact that few minorities passed the examination should be a call for remedial action–not to throw out the test but to equip more minorities to pass it.” (more…)