One of Ours

...[Lesley-Anne Jones, who teaches fifth grade at Public School 158 in the East New York section of Brooklyn] drives the children to a nearby private school, the Trey Whitfield School. Every month, she and her husband send the school a check for $900, the equivalent of almost two weeks' take-home pay from her job. They make the sacrifice because Trey Whitfield offers their children a demonstrably safer and better education than what is available at either P.S. 158 or their local school, Public School 149.

There is nothing effete about the private education at the Whitfield School. Its campus consists of three cinder-block barracks tucked behind a Baptist church. The curriculum eschews the fashionable pedagogies of whole language and constructivist math. From pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, every pupil wears a uniform. And not a single child in a student body of 470 is white...

[...]

When white families pull their children out of big-city public schools, everybody pays attention and debates whether the cause is educational failure, racial bias or some other factor. When African-American parents do the same thing, hardly anyone seems to care or comment, as if blacks are just supposed to accept whatever the neighborhood school dishes up - good, mediocre or abysmal.

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...leaders in public education would be wise to pay attention to why a stable, devout, upwardly mobile segment of the African-American population is deserting.

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...every family that manages to depart its neighborhood school leaves behind deepening problems for those who cannot escape.

"Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children," said Dr. Foster, who has studied black independent schools. "What's left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There's been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn't stopping now."