Giving Compass' Take:

• At The 74, Derrell Bradford discusses the segregation in America's schools and how reform opponents use it as an excuse for underperforming schools, even though the problems run much deeper.

• In what ways can we shift the conversation to discuss the root causes of the problems facing our education system and have an honest debate about school choice?

· Learn more about the segregation in America's schools and the nuances around the topic.

For decades, the traditional public school lobby argued that poverty was intractable and had to be erased before schools full of poor kids could be expected not to perform poorly. It was a powerful argument, not just because it made emotional sense, but because it deflected all blame from the schools and onto the external conditions of economic distress, while making solving poverty a precondition to improving education.

But after years of asserting that schools perform poorly because “the kids are poor,” these same folks were presented with a mountain of evidence, from charter schools and other options, as well as a few unicorn-y school districts, showing that minority kids can and do learn at high levels regardless of the economic circumstances of their parents. This on top of the long track record of urban parochial schools educating low-income students before and during the charter era.

In a time of heightened racial divisiveness, it also forces choice, and charter supporters in particular, to argue “against” school integration because it will, coincidentally, bust up schools full of high-achieving black kids that unions and progressives seem to dislike. What’s accepted in this notion is that if something is predominantly black, it must also be predominantly bad. Even the discussion affirms how little the anti-choice crowd thinks of the agency of black parents and the achievement of black students.

Read the full article about school integration and the school choice conversation by Derrell Bradford at The 74.