It not only shows how the education establishment's excuses for miserable results in ghetto schools are contradicted by the success of a man who runs some charter schools very differently from the way most public schools are run. It also reveals something about the very different ways that liberals and conservatives look at racial issues in general. With education, as with other issues, liberals focus on black failures while conservatives focus on black successes. Marva Collins is perhaps the best-known of the people who have run successful black schools. It was not the liberals, but Ronald Reagan, who offered her the job of Secretary of Education.
Liberals have a large vested interest in the failure, pathology and dependency of blacks.
From the standpoint of liberal politicians, of whatever race, so long as there are enough blacks are on the welfare state plantation, this is a bloc of votes that can help offset the changing mood of the country as a whole toward conservatism. From the standpoint of the liberal intelligentsia, feeling sorry for blacks is an ego trip that makes them feel one-up on American society in general and conservatives in particular. Blacks who succeed, whether as individuals or in institutions, are not a source of either ego satisfaction or votes. Liberals are about envy, which was once disdained as one of the seven deadly sins. The very concept of achievement seldom appears in liberal writings, while it is a dominant theme in much conservative literature.