Winners in the Game of Life

As part of his recap of this weekend’s high school football action, The Register’s Cody Goodwin mentioned the consecutive win streak of suburban schools over DMPS teams is now 115.   Just to be clear Ankeny, Centennial, Dowling, Johnston, Southeast Polk, Urbandale, Valley, and Waukee have beat up on East, Hoover,Lincoln, North, and Roosevelt 115 times in a row. In case you are wondering, Lincoln beat Urbandale 13 to 12 on August 28, 2008. This is a problem which has led some district officials to propose setting up a special classification for athletic competition limited to those schools with particularly high numbers of students of low socio-economic status. This proposal is debatable, but a much larger problem and tragic issue lies below the headlines on the sports page. City schools are lagging just as badly in the classroom. This chart shows two significant measures of academic progress: Reading proficiency and 4 year graduation rates.   ...

Friday night at our home opener against the Roosevelt Roughriders I was sitting a few rows behind our enthusiastic student section. While the small but mighty East High Marching Band was belting out the Star Spangled Banner, a thought randomly entered my mind. You see,  within the venerable Duke Williams Stadium  nearly the entire kaleidoscope of the human community stood respectfully shoulder to shoulder. This cross-section of the world's people walk through our hallways daily and on Friday nights during the Fall show their school spirit at the gridiron. Last night before my eyes were students of Nordic, West African, Southeast Asian, Central American descent as well as every other shade, hue, and combination.   I couldn’t help thinking, “Mr. President you cannot stop this change which is evidenced right here in front of me. The days of your America are over, you just don’t know it yet. Long after you are gone (and hopefully forgotten) this diverse mix of yo...