Separate and Still NOT Equal

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal passed legislation that would allow Louisiana students to opt out of the state’s standard curriculum (with parental consent) and enroll into a lower education-intensive program. Portrayed as an avenue toward a high school diploma, it is segmenting a generation and forever excluding them from true prosperity. The alternative program described as a “Career Track” is designed to introduce these students to “blue collar” jobs that they would be eligible for immediately after high school. Students are not required to pass the state’s standardized test for the eighth grade nor are they required to display competence in English or Mathematics to be promoted to the ninth grade. In other words, we have an example of a state government that is more concerned with graduation rates than the quality of the diploma.

Why would a state pass legislation to prepare students for blue collar and low-level jobs that will not exist in 25-30 years? The lowered levels established to obtain this diploma would preclude that these students will not have the necessary skills to transition with the natural progression of our global economy which inevitably will leave them confined to the lower class. Commonsense would advocate increased parental involvement and have additional educational-support programs for struggling demographics to meet current educational standards. Granted this provides a solution to increase the graduation rate from 40% for black students, but to do so at the expense of our communities educational standards is a civil injustice.

In effect Gov. Jindal has decided that these students, current and future, will not aspire to achieve educational excellence beyond a high school diploma so he has given them an easy option. In addition, he has instituted intellectual class warfare on minority communities…and we are losing. If there was ever a sign to enact change, this is it. From the outside looking in one would think that if we settled for broken homes with absent fathers, a code in which respect is earned by the amount of time served in prison and an overall slow deterioration of black society then it would be no surprise that we would settle for lowered educational standards as well. Our history is filled with times that we have proven doubters wrong. This time I hope we challenge ourselves to step up and prove that we are better than what statistics state we are instead of doing what we are expected to do and literally dumb it down.