You have to hand it to the folks on Right Wing Avenue and their obsession with destroying public education and treating kids like just every other product for the free market to sort out, like shoes, mp3 players, and potato chips.

The market fundamentalists are relentless in their crusade to privatize public schools and don’t mind ignoring facts and social science if they have to. They are even willing to temporarily put aside their normal demonization of the poor.

WPTF News Director Rick Martinez does all that and more in his latest column for the News & Observer, arguing that North Carolina public schools are incapable of educating the vast majority of minority children in the state and the only solution is to send them to private schools.

As part of the tangled and distorted web he weaves to support that outrageous statement, he claims that public schools are set up to benefit teachers and that “kids are just the vehicles for their enrichment.”  

That’s an assertion that manages to impugn the integrity of both public school officials and classroom teachers, who will no doubt be surprised to learn that they are becoming rich in their efforts to help children learn.

Martinez then moves on to condemn Wake County Schools for its latest school reassignment plan that he says will “bus thousands of kids away from their neighborhood schools, based partly on an unproven theory that putting a low-income kid next to a rich kid makes the poor kid smarter.”

Wake County Schools have been praised nationwide for maintaining both economically diverse schools and high student achievement. The system’s graduation rate is the second highest among the 50 largest school systems in the country.

The latest reassignment plan affects roughly 6,800 of the system’s 134,000 students. Even the most strident opponents of the proposal admit that half of the reassignments are related to growth and the need for new schools and are not related to diversity goals.

That means 2.5 percent of Wake County students face reassignment because of the system’s policy to try to keep schools economically diverse. It doesn’t make poor kids smarter, but research shows it makes it more likely that they will do well than if they were in a school with a high percentage of poor kids.

Richard Kahlenburg at the Century Foundation is one of many scholars who argue that economic diversity in schools is vital to help poor students succeed and cites plenty of studies to back it up.

A 2002 Wisconsin study found that poor students improved on math and reading tests for every increase in the percentage of middle class kids in their class. The same study found that test scores of poor kids in economically diverse middle schools were dramatically higher than those of poor students in poor schools.

The kids don’t get smarter, they have a better learning environment, they are pushed more by their peers, teachers and principals are better qualified, and more parents are involved with the school.

After raising Wake County’s reassignment plan as an issue, Martinez admits that growth plays a role too and moves on to slam Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools for its failure to convince good teachers to transfer to poor schools.  Charlotte does not use economic diversity as a criterion for reassignment, which Martinez doesn’t mention.

Instead he warns against “leaving our children’s future in the hands of pandering politicians and self-serving educators” and then criticizes the NAACP for a march this coming weekend. The group and its allies are gathering to build support for a 14-point People’s Agenda that focuses on anti-racism and anti-poverty initiatives like affordable housing, health care, and higher wages for low-income workers.

Martinez says the agenda is “14 points too long” and that the march will accomplish nothing, that the “time for marches and agendas is over” and the NAACP should instead be raising money for scholarships to private schools.

Nice of him to declare that race and poverty are no longer problems, but millions of North Carolinians know that’s absurd. They also understand that there is an undeniable correlation between poverty and how well kids do in school. Helping poor families helps poor students succeed.

So does keeping schools economically balanced. Wake County proves that and so does the research.  Let’s hope the marches and the agendas roll on, and not only to demand more support for poor families, but also to reaffirm our community’s commitment to a strong, diverse, and successful public school system.  That’s the best way to answer what is the real threat to our children’s future, the market zealots and their ideological crusade.