INSPIRING – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  We're always happy to report on people taking matters into their own hands and coming up with innovative, private solutions when government fails.   It turns out that, increasingly, African-Americans are home-schooling their kids, turned off by the violent, drug-infested atmosphere in many predominantly black schools.  This is a good trend, and a needed rebuff to a lax educational establishment and an equally lax black leadership, more interested in itself than in solving real problems.  From Fox:

It’s the end of another school year, and for a growing number of African-American kids, it will be their last outside the home.

Nationwide, more and more families are choosing to home school their children each year, and the fastest growing segment of the home school movement is African-Americans, experts say. Some 220,000 black children are home-schooled, according to one estimate.

“Each one of them has excelled so much, and I can see it,” Kisha Hayes, of Baton Rouge, La., says of her three children, whom she began home-schooling five years ago. “I can see the difference in their learning.”

Alkinee Jackson, also of Baton Rouge, began home-schooling her five children after she and her husband saw the attitude and behavior of their oldest son, Alante, worsen. He was only in second grade.

“If we allowed him to continue to be there and be influenced, by the time he reached high school he’d already be gone; and we know where he’d end up,” Jackson said.

Nationwide, home-schooling grew from 1.7 percent of the school-age population in 1999 to 2.9 percent in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The total number of kids being home-schooled has more than doubled since 1999 to more than two million, according to estimates. Some 220,000 of those students are African-American, according to The National Home Education Research Institute.

George Noblit, an education sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said African-American parents increasingly turn to home-schooling to protect their children from drugs and bullying, as well as to ensure the kids get more individualized instruction.

“For African Americans, the current state of education is actually not one that is conducive to kids learning,” Noblit told FoxNews.com. “More and more kids end up not being served well. African Americans are positively saying, ‘It’s time to find a better educational situation.’”

COMMENT:  George W. Bush condemned the "soft bigotry of low expectations."  Of course, he was laughed at.  But black kids face that soft bigotry every day in many public schools.  They also encounter teachers who cannot or will not teach, and fellow students who are bad influences.

It is good to see black parents rebelling against the status quo.  Good education begins with good families.  Maybe there's hope.

June 16, 2012