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A White House initiative was recently established through an executive order written by our President. This initiative that will be housed in the Education Department targets the black Americans and promises educational excellence.

According to this initiative, there will be effort to improve black achievement in colleges and schools by identifying practices that are evidence based. As we look around, it is evident that black education is in dire straits. There will however be no improvement in the situation as the executive order will not be able to achieve anything significant.

There is a major reason for this. There is widespread educational rot faced by black Americans and the order does not address this root cause. There is not a single mention about the inner-city school violence that is rampant today in the initiative. This makes it practically impossible to achieve educational excellence any time soon.

Statistics are alarming to say the least. In Philadelphia, there are over 268 schools and the number of criminal incidents in the past five years crossed 30,000. In this, at least 4000 incidents of rapes and robberies involved teachers. Out of the total 200 police officers employed by the school district in Philadelphia, many were recently laid off.

At least 700 people were victims of gunfire in Chicago and many lost their lives. In Newark, Oakland, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore and other predominantly black cities, you can find many such stories of school and street violence. It is nigh impossible to achieve academic excellence if nothing is done about reducing rampant crime in schools.

In the initiative, our President states that these schools will benefit from disparate use of disciplinary tools in order to promote a positive environment. Doing this will only lead to undermining of discipline in these schools and thereby increase in crime and violence.

In order to do well in school, irrespective of whether students are white or black, certain minimum requirements have to be met. There has to be someone who is responsible for these students and who will make sure he respects and obeys teachers, gets to school on time, gets sumptuous breakfast, has a good night’s sleep and does his homework regularly.

These are vital factors that cannot be addressed by any presidential executive order, mayor edict or congressional mandate. Without fulfilling these minimum requirements, it is not possible to bring about a change through any other means. Poor parenting will make a mockery of any money spent on educating them.

Many studies have been conducted to show that educationally, black students who come from stable families perform better as compared to those coming from single parent households. Black families have always been quite stable historically. Today however, black children who come from stable families are only 33%.

As you look around, you will find that in today’s high-tech world, young blacks are practically useless. There is hope in the fact that many of these students are being taken out of public schools by concerned black parents.

The fact remains that black youngsters who need education desperately will not be helped in any way by the president’s initiative that will only enrich the educational establishment.