'Education Is Not Just for the Privileged Few'

By A. Polly Williams

Every day in Milwaukee, 1,600 yellow school buses shuttle children from their neighborhoods to distant schools. One thousand six hundred buses. Daily. Busing students from one school to another does not help them learn. Vouchers do. That, quite simply, is why I keep fighting for less busing and more vouchers.

Sixty-seven thousand Milwaukee students ride buses, but academic achievement is no better than it was when students were taught in neighborhood schools. Busing fooled parents. They were led to believe that if they put their child on a bus, that child would be better educated. It was a big lie.

It is malicious and cruel to put the burden of school desegregation on young children, as young as kindergarten, leaving them literally standing out in the cold. The first child picked up at 5:30 in the morning is the last child home after school, getting home at 7 at night. These black children will be tired, not alert, in the classroom. For adults to put this kind of burden on children is child abuse. Adults are forcing children to do something they...