Parents v. the Board of Ed

George Will on school choice. In Kansas, the home of the Brown in Brown v. the Board of Education:

Two educators wanted to use Sumner for a charter school, a public school entitled to operate outside the confinements of dictated curricula and free from many work rules written by teachers unions. Their school would have been a back-to-basics academy for grades K through five, designed to attack Topeka's 23-point gap between the reading proficiency of black and Hispanic third-graders and that of whites.

When the school board rejected the application of the two educators -- African-American women -- but praised their dedication to children, one of the women was not mollified: "A bleeding heart does nothing but ruin the carpet.''

New school choice efforts are taking place in traditionally liberal New Jersey and New York. We need some real advances in Illinois. That would take leadership.

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