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are the small pack that has broken ahead of the pelotn with the desire to stay ahead and thus cross the finish line first. Unfortunately, in education, the finish line is not so finite, but a blurred chronology of a person's history and open to debate. Charter schools have defied the concept of educational inclusion in the US and have more resembled participants in countries like Japan that displays a clear hierarchy of school quality an embodiment of the educational exclusion model.

In the United States today, we are so preoccupied with the equity issue, that the idea of politically correct really means politically bland. Special education lobbyists have transformed IDEA into a safe haven for students with disabilities and wield tremendous power by demanding and adhering to IEP details. Parents threaten school districts with lawsuits that will never be challenged, leaving districts to defer because of lack of funding to contest. In the United States we equity ourselves to death so that the mathematical average of our diversity is not:

50 = 10+20+30+40+50+60+70+80+90+100 /10,

but that it is:

50 = 10+10+10+10+ 10+100+100+100+100+100/10.

In dialectical terms we have taken the flavor of a culture and placed it face to face with a non-culture to create an unsavory culture of blandness, resentment and underlying hatred. The Colorado football coach last year was reflecting the voices of many in our culture when asked why they had lost the game, said, "We didn't have enough black players on the team." Although he was promptly dismissed for this comment, he had the courage to say what has been on the tongues of so many people in this country that black athletes are indeed superior to white athletes. So, the resultant formula for success is half white/half black? That's not a winning formula!

Some aspects of our society must be skewed in order to be successful. Charter schools have demonstrated that. Our challenge is to reconcile diversity with academic success one student at a time.

Learn more about this author, Luigi Yannotta.
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