Property taxes are a problem where local property taxes fund local schools, but they don't explain the problem of racial disparities in school performance.

In California, property taxes are submitted to the state and then allocated to the school districts on a per student basis with additional funding going to poor school districts to cover incremental costs associated with schools in those areas. It did not fix the racial disparities in testing results.

So, a school district in northern California eliminated advanced math courses under the mistaken belief that poor black and Hispanic students start out behind and because of tracking never catch up. The theory sounded logical, but the result was disparities got worse.

The reality appears to be some of the "blame" does reside with poor black parents, but also with poor Hispanic parents, and poor white parents... notice the common denominator... "poor" parents, not black.

However, poverty alone does not explain the problem. Poor Jewish, poor Indian, and poor Chinese children as a whole did not experience the same underperformance. This argues that while poverty is an excellent predictor of academic results, it is not the primary cause of academic disparities.

My brother founded a charter school, where 75% of 2023's high school graduates came from predominantly black families whose income was below the federal poverty line, yet 100% of the class graduated and 94% were accepted into college. The test scores of these children were competitive with the suburban "white" schools of New Jersey.

Interestingly, the charter school gets around 85% of the funding of the community urban public schools and yet produces dramatically better results... results as mentioned that compete with "white suburban" schools.

So funding is not the problem.

More funding never hurts, but the results of the charter school's performance highlight that while on average a child educational performance highly correlates with socioeconomic and racial status of the student, neither of those factors are casual factors... only correlated ones.

This is a critical concept... correlation does not mean causation. And it means we need to dig deeper to find the casual factors leading to poor performance in poor inner-city schools.

Freakanomics was published decades ago and included a fascinating study on a limited school voucher program in Chicago. The study concluded that the students of parents who made the effort to submit their child for consideration in the city's random selection of students eligible for its school choice program did better whether or not they were selected in the lottery and got a choice of schools, than children whose parents did not apply to put their children in the lottery.

So, performance was not based on which school the children attended, or the economic status of their families, though academic performance in general is correlated with those things.

The only explanation for the difference was something going on in the homes of the children whose parents enrolled their children in the lottery program that was not going on in the homes of the other children.

The Michigan public teachers did a study and did find a critical causal factor with respect to student performance.... parental involvement. The skin color of the parents mattered far less, than the parent's involvement in their children's education.

This is both a positive discovery and a discouraging one.

The positive one, perhaps, epitomized by Ben Carson's mother... a single woman who was singularly focused on her children succeeding and pushed them to mimic the study behaviors of successful children living in higher income homes.

The discouraging aspect of this discovery is that society can make it easier for poor children to succeed, but without parental involvement studies show the majority of these children will not escape poverty.

And so sadly both the credit and blame do in fact reside with the parents.

Society can make it easier for those parents willing to get involved in their children's education to do so. But that is not the driver.

If slavery explained the poor performance of black children today, then we should expect poor white children who were not subject to slavery to perform far better than their black peers... they don't.

The simple brutal truth is poverty has a culture associated with it and the culture is hard to escape. Poor children growing up in this culture can only escape if their parents are determined that their children will escape... even if they can't. Ben Carson's mother cleaned houses, but she was never going to be a victim, and neither were her children... here is what Ben Carson wrote about her when she died...

"Today, November 6, 2017 we lost my dear mother, Sonya Carson. Although she came from an impoverished background with very little formal education, she somehow understood how success was achieved in our society. If anyone had a reason to make excuses, it was her, but she absolutely refused to be a victim and would not permit us to develop the victim mentality either. Whenever we made an excuse, she quoted the poem "Yourself to Blame." The poem is included in this post. May she rest in peace.

Yourself to Blame

by Mayme White Miller

If things go bad for you

And make you a bit ashamed

Often you will find out that

You have yourself to blame

Swiftly we ran to mischief

And then the bad luck came

Why do we fault others?

We have ourselves to blame

Whatever happens to us,

Here is what we say

"Had it not been for so-and-so

Things wouldn't have gone that way."

And if you are short of friends,

I'll tell you what to do

Make an examination,

You'll find the faults in you...

You are the captain of your ship,

So agree with the same

If you travel downward

You have yourself to blame"

As a parent of five children, I know how hard it can be raising a child to become an independent adult. I have no doubt it can be doubly hard for poor parents trying to make ends meet to spend the time with each child to help them succeed, especially when your own life is so hard. But millions of parents have done it. No doubt it is easier to teach a child how to succeed when you have... but as Ben Carson's mother demonstrated, it is not essential.

Blaming society won't fix the challenge of teaching children growing up in poverty to reject the culture around them and embrace values that will lead to their success in life. Society can make it easier, but society can't fix the culture... that is something parents and mentors can do... not government or other institutions.