Howard Fineman of Obamaweek writes that Obama "came {to New Orleans} with news that the Orleans Parish school system was about to get a check for $1.8 billion. Whee. That's you and me...our tax dollars. Now for $1.8 billion bucks (extra bucks), Orleans Parish ought be set to pump out the most bestest everest students ever. But...Obama won't talk about the real problem behind the fact that some students just won't make the cut no matter how much money and time we pour into them. Liberals all would like to believe if the middle class just paid more taxes achievement gaps would end and high school drop out rates would plummet.

But fantasy is headbutting reality. Billionaires give inner city student a free check card if they will just stay the course--but only a fraction do, despite more money lavished upon them than tiny Tim at Christmas.

Here we stop and point you to a fine piece by George Will on the 70% Problem that liberals won't talk about. Better to spend the money of the those who do the right thing than talk about those who don't. What is the right thing: Have children you can nurture and afford and love enough to find their way through life. Honest to gosh it IS that simple. And this is not a paean to marriage; single women can raise a child nicely IF they have the prior education and money and necessary support systems to get the job done.
From Wapo, Will on the 70% Problem:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2010/08/29/social_woes_in_black_and_whi...

America's tragic number -- tragic because it is difficult to conceive remedial policies -- is 70 percent. This is the portion of African American children born to unmarried women.

Only 35 percent of black children live with two parents, which partly explains why, while only 24 percent of white eighth-graders watch four or more hours of television on an average day, 59 percent of their black peers do. Black children also are disproportionately handicapped by this class-based disparity: By age 4, the average child in a professional family hears about 20 million more words than the average child in a working-class family and about 35 million more than the average child in a welfare family -- a child often alone with a mother who is a high school dropout.

More:
Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s.
He {Barton} has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools' proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students' homes -- and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.

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Do read the rest!

So, folks, there are plenty of tricks we can try to reach out to children born to parents unready to have them or parent them. But isn't that just a band aid and one that is not working! Recently Bloomberg has more mustard on his face when it was revealed that white /black school achievement rates are going nowhere despite his big money and policy push. (The gap narrowed for a while, but only because the school system lowered standards and made D the new A!

The hard truth is that until more black women educate themselves before they procreate themselves no amount of money is gonna save their offspring.