It is no surprise that the general crisis is sharpest in the racially and nationally oppressed communities.
The crisis in education is no exception. It is true now as it was in 1954 when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided that schools are, in the main, segregated. Schools in nationally oppressed communities are hit the hardest by this crisis. Schools are woefully underfunded. The impact on immigrant students is dramatic as bilingual programs have been slashed and attacked by right wing forces. The achievement gap for black and Latino students have not been closed under the eight years of the Bush administration. The rhetoric of accountability, privatization, and standardization now dominates both major political parties. They inherently fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty Closing schools has a profound effect in disrupting communities and offers nothing by the way of improving them. The private sector only serves to undermine public education. Currently, there are approximately 5,000 charter schools nationwide. They serve about 3% of the nation's students. Our fight must be to make every public school a quality school.