In certain DC schools districts lagging children are no longer invited to remedial summer classes because they “are too far behind.”

What can you say about the education of children who are so bad that they don't even qualify for remedial classes?  Richard Fernadez: 

The Washington Post says that “fewer than half of D.C. children are proficient in reading, according to standardized tests, and more than a third of all city residents are functionally illiterate, according to a 2007 report.” This despite the availability of “public education” which by rights should have made illiteracy a thing of the past.

But public education’s achievements — or lack thereof — can be gauged by the Post’s further reporting that in certain DC schools districts lagging children are no longer invited to remedial summer classes because they “are too far behind.” They can’t even be included in remediation for fear they will prove an anchor round the necks of any students who might actually have a chance to escape the government-funded shipwreck. Money is apparently not the problem. The DC school district is already spending nearly more per capita than Harvard.

American taxpayers already spend some $600 billion per year on public elementary and secondary schools, with average per-pupil expenditures nationwide currently at an all-time high of about $11,000—a nearly fourfold increase (in constant present-day dollars) since 1961. But even this figure is dwarfed by the $29,400 per-pupil cost of a public elementary and high-school education in Washington, DC. That astounding sum is nearly as much as the yearly cost of an undergraduate education at Harvard.

Mark Steyn argues that the greatest devastation inflicted by political corruption on America has not been the destruction of buildings. It has been the annihilation of minds.

In my book After America, I observe that the physical decay of Detroit — the vacant and derelict lots for block after block after block — is as nothing compared to the decay of the city’s human capital. Forty-seven percent of adults are functionally illiterate, which is about the same rate as the Central African Republic, which at least has the excuse that it was ruled throughout the Seventies by a cannibal emperor. Why would any genuine innovator open a business in a Detroit “innovation hub”? Whom would you employ? The illiterates include a recent president of the school board, Otis Mathis, which doesn’t bode well for the potential work force a decade hence.

when you hear the "black leaders" on TV talking about how they are working to solve the problems of the underclass, you can't believe them. Even a half-hearted attempt would do something about the creation of an illiterate population.  

Bobby Rush tried to deflect blame by telling Newt Gingrich that

"I have been working relentlessly since I've been in Congress, even when you were the speaker of the House and didn't want to hear any of these matters. I have been working on trying to deal with this violence. I'm astounded and ashamed about this violence. But this is also systemic to an overall problem. Chicago will take care of this violence. That's one of the reasons why on a Friday, the 26th, we're having this National Summit on Urban Violence. This was before the verdict we had planned this. The congressional black caucus is coming into Chicago so that we can work on solutions to this problem."

Just like  O.J. Simpson has been working tirelessly to find out who murdered his wife.  What was bizarre was Rush's segue into quoting scripture.  Watch the whole thing beginning with the smarmy Candy Crowley.

Fernandez concludes by quoting Romany Malco on Trayvon Martin: 

To be brutally honest, the only reason people are even aware of Trayvon Martin is because it became a topic within mainstream news and pop culture. Meaning: News directors saw it as a profitable, sensational story. …

Our “government” continues to wreak havoc on our civil liberties and there is little to no protest from the black community because of media diversion tactics that keep such pertinent issues out of mainstream media. But if Jay-Z or Rihanna were to make mention of it, we’d suddenly be jolted out of our sugar comas and protesting on freeways.

My point being, people are up in arms about Trayvon based on regurgitated pundits and manipulated facts aired to elicit emotion while fueling America’s anger and division. That’s how you boost ratings. No different from Piers Morgan’s desperate rant over gun control when he knew his ratings were in the dumps….

I believe we lost that trial for Trayvon long before he was killed. Trayvon was doomed the moment ignorance became synonymous with young black America . We lost that case by using media outlets (music, movies, social media, etc.) as vehicles to perpetuate the same negative images and social issues that destroyed the black community in the first place. When we went on record glorifying violent crime and when we voted for a president we never thought to hold accountable. When we signed on to do reality shows that fed into the media’s stereotypes of black men, we ingrained an image of Trayvon Martin so overwhelming that who he actually may have been didn’t matter anymore.

No he didn’t matter any more. Because Trayvon Martin the fact was never of any interest to anybody. The facts never mattered; reality is unconstitutional. All the system cared about was Trayvon Martin the fiction; the meal ticket, the product, the Narrative. Nobody gave a damn about the actual man. In this respect he was exactly what all those illiterate multitudes in the crashing cities are: just meal tickets for a system that uses them as window-dressing to justify scams and job programs meant to benefit only political hacks.

This can't be said any better, and should be said many times and in many places.