I’ll offer another view here and just suggest that if you don’t think ‘nice white parents’ are behind the nightmares of Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles schools I hope you’ll look again.

I understand where you are but it was the abandonment of urban schools — I watched Betsy DeVos extend an already disastrous situation in Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids, etc — that created all that you describe. Terrified that their little children wouldn’t be the dominant group in the classroom, they fled for the suburbs, exurbs, private, and highly segregated charters. When they couldn’t dictate the demographic mix they took their ball and left.

As I note in my post, urban schools were forced to segregate internally — via ‘gifted’ labels for white kids — or watch those kids and the political capital that supports funding just disappear.

• Ira Socol