I can't address the entire parent post, but I can address judging the current state of accusations of racism aimed at reformers in public schools, I was able to view it firsthand at a Philadelphia public school for years on end, where ANY data on an education gap (a widening one), both racial or economically divided, would be met with "you clearly hate black people", regardless of if that has any bearing on the discussion. This occurred during school board, PTO, UPG, and student teacher meetings. It was appalling to me how much racism/classism was thrown around as a reason to not apply any sort of response to the current broken state of education, and for how appalling it was, it was equally effective at stopping change. So in this at least, there is really no question as to the accuracy of whether these things occur and harm the students, for me. They do occur, they do harm students, and like other deep set prejudices and dogmatic belief, I have no idea where to punch that glacier to address the problem
