The "Parenting Gap"

The Washington Post runs a depressing piece in Outlook today by Patrick Welsh, an Alexandria, Virginia high school English teacher who is struggling with the academic failures of his “virtually all-black class of 12th-graders.” Mr. Welsh, who may risk being dismissed as a racist by the mafia of bad-policy education formulators, and disciplined by school administrators who are in their thrall, argues that you can throw millions of dollars at the problem, like oil onto flames, but until you get parents-and especially fathers-to care about the education and welfare of their children, nothing you do is going to help.