Affirmative Action Can’t Fix Racial Disparities In Education. This Can.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, affirmative action in college admissions is effectively dead. But while racial preferences were the wrong solution, the underlying problem is real: We have horrific racial disparities in elementary and secondary education in this country that make it harder for poor Black and Hispanic students to gain admission to, and succeed in, college. And that is because millions are trapped in failing public schools that do not prepare them for college, much less for life — and because their parents do not have the same choices as affluent White parents do to send them to good schools.

The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show that pandemic lockdowns wiped out nearly two decades of progress in reading and more than three decades of progress in math. And since the lockdowns, schools are failing to make up for those learning losses. Black and Hispanic students in schools with high poverty rates suffered learning losses far worse than their White peers, because high-poverty schools stayed closed longer than schools in more affluent communities.

One study by Curriculum Associates found that schools serving majority Black and Latino students reported “almost double the amount of unfinished learning” in third-grade reading and math in 2021 than did schools where the majority of students were White. According to McKinsey, the cumulative learning losses during the pandemic could reduce students’ lifetime earnings by as much as $61,000 — with poor and minority students the worst affected.

Continue reading in The Washington Post.