Thread by @kevincarey1

1/ In @DemJournal I make the case against K-12 school districts.

School districts are tools of segregation and permanent inequality. To change that, we should adopt three policies:

1) Redistricting
2) National Funding
3) Decriminalization

democracyjournal.org/magazine/no-mo…

2/ REDISTRICTING means redrawing school district boundaries every 10 years with an eye toward administrative efficiency and racial and economic integration. Thurgood Marshall suggested as much in his Milliken v. Bradley dissent.

3/ District boundaries may seem set in stone, but they’re not. There was enormous district consolidation and change in the first half of the 20th century and there should be again.

4/ NATIONAL FUNDING means reforming the one major public service that remains tied to a 19th century funding model. Large amounts of new federal money would be contingent on state-level finance reforms.

5/ We can optimize standards and curricula and accountability and those are very important things, but we will never have educational justice in this country as long we continue giving the least amount of resources to the poorest students in the poorest states.

6/ DECRIMINALIZATION is pretty simple. Anyone should be eligible to enroll their children in any public school. Fining and arresting people for educating their kids is obscene.

7/ Put these 3 pieces together and school districts will no longer operate as fortresses of inequality. It will be much more difficult to buy your way into abnormally wealthy, segregated public schools. Districts will counteract class stratification rather than make it worse.

8/ The piece also tells the long story of how K-12 districts got to be the way they are, including why all the districts below the Mason-Dixon line are coterminous with counties. (Answer: racism!)

9/ And the two landmark / terrible early '70s Supreme Court cases that are very familiar to people in the field and created a foundation of inequality that has fatally hamstrung the school reform movement ever since.

10/ Shout-out to @RebeccaSibilia, @mattrichmnd, and the team at @EdBuild, who have done stellar work in this area and created the data tool I used to find the Reading, PA example.

edbuild.org/content/dividi…

10/ Also check out @AdamHSays on the new secession

theatlantic.com/education/arch…

And of course @NewAmerica fellow @nhannahjones whose upcoming book will be the last and best word on the subject.