What Color is Freedom?

Under the much-maligned federal No Child Left Behind law, 494 students in Ocala, Florida requested transfers out of schools considered to be failing and into schools of their choice.

A district court ruling has just told 222 of those children: Tough luck, you're staying put.

Ocala, it turns out, is still under a 26 year-old court desegregation order and the denied school transfers would violate that order by allowing white students to move to whiter schools and black students to move to blacker schools.

It doesn't matter that the families involved want these moves. It makes no difference whether the kids would indeed be better off in their chosen (but forbidden) schools. All that matters is that black and white faces have to mix in the right proportions.

What a tragedy.

I long for an end to bigotry and descrimination, for a society that makes a reality of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream, but this isn't going to get us there.

African Americans will be able to close the academic and career gaps with whites when they have ready access to high-quality schools of their own choosing. Focusing on race at the expense of what is best academically just doesn't make sense--and it isn't supported by the evidence.

Research shows that African Americans in big cities are much more likely to complete high-school, attend college, and complete college if they attend private Catholic schools than if they attend public schools.

If we had a real market in education in this country, coupled with financial assistance to ensure universal access, we could do a lot more to close the education gap than we ever will by making the color of children's skin the ultimate determinant of the schools they attend.