Lance

Do I believe kids in inner city Milwaukee have equal opportunity for a good education?

I believe the state is providing the same level of opportunity for kids in inner city Milwaukee that they're providing for kids in Baraboo. Thirteen years of free education.

Just look at your assertion again: Equality of opportunity requires all Americans to have access to a basic education.

Every child in Wisconsin has the opportunity to attend thirteen years of school, for free. All of these schools are required to offer a certain number of classes in all the basics - the three R's plus a few things. All are staffed by professional teachers who went to college to become teachers and successfully graduated.

That's equality of opportunity. It's there. It's being provided. In reality, we know that not everyone is able to fully take advantage of that opportunity. I'll come back to that.

I think you're looking at the outcomes - the low test scores - and assuming that means that opportunity isn't equal.

Note that, when the paper reports "low test scores" for MPS, what they're saying is a very high percentage of students score low. There are still students scoring very high in those schools: they are taking advantage of the opportunities before them. In Baraboo, a district with "high test scores," there are still students scoring in the lowest percentiles. These students are not taking advantage of their opportunities.

Why is that? The opportunities are equal. The environments in which individuals live aren't.

As a human being, I find it tragic that so many kids are going to grow up without a good education. As a conservative, I admit that there's a limit to what we can do about that. No matter how much money we spend on education, no matter how many programs we create, the state can't do everything.

One child lives in a home where the parents (or, more likely, parent) is rarely home, whether because the parent has to work a lot, or because the parent is out drinking all the time (or worse). No supervision, no books, nobody checking homework. This child has a very poor chance of getting a good education, no matter how much money the state spends.

Another child has college-educated parents who stress the importance of education, encourage the child to read, and insist that the child do his/her best in school. This child has a very good chance of getting a good education, even if conditions at school aren't the best.

Note that having parents home a lot isn't the only factor: Todd and I were latchkey kids for most of our school years, as I recall. We both did fine in school. I think we can attribute that to having college educated parents who stressed the importance of education.

But some kids don't have that. What are we supposed to do? Take them away from their homes?

In the same way, there's very little the state can do to make sure people live healthy lives. It would be better all around - for individuals and for society - if everybody ate right, exercised regularly, and quit smoking. We all have the opportunity to do these things. Some of us take that opportunity, some of us don't.

This is, I think, a basic tenet of American-style conservatism: the state does what it can, but we can't (and shouldn't) depend on it for everything. Individuals have to take responsibility for themselves.