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“Pastor, have you ever read Thomas Sowell on this high school?” Elaine asked me as we stood outside Paul Laurence Dunbar High School — or Dunbar, for short — in Northwest Washington, D.C. I told her that was why I made a point of making Dunbar a stop on my Walk Across America to revive merit and the American Dream. I had asked her, a mother of two kids in the school, what it was like, and her verdict was sadly negative. “Sowell said Dunbar was an example of excellence back in the day. What happened?”
From 1870 to 1955, this all-Black public school drew ambitious families from across the country — parents relocating just to enroll their kids for the best shot at life. Sowell described these families as “aspirational,” meaning they sought to overcome any obstacles. They were a determined people, and such people cannot be stopped. The classrooms were full, sometimes overcrowded, but the results did not lie. Dunbar graduates outscored white schools on exams, and nearly all went on to college — some to the Ivy League.
Some famous graduates include Jean Toomer, author of “Cane;” Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the first Black general in the U.S. Army; and William Hastie, the first Black federal judge — along with many others who became doctors, lawyers, and artists.
However, the move toward integration after Brown v. Board of Education in the late 1950s gutted the parent-choice movement — what we call school choice today. Dunbar was no longer open to all of D.C. but became a neighborhood school, drawing students mainly from the immediate area. Worse, the top Black students who lived within the school limits were often bused out to white schools.
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Standards plummeted almost immediately. By the 1970s, it was struggling. Elaine told me it has only gotten worse. She would know — she attended Dunbar in the late 1990s. Today, fights break out weekly. The football team was recently suspended after a bench-clearing brawl, and games were forfeited. There are metal detectors everywhere, but they are useless against the chaos of unruly kids who exhaust many of the teachers.
The academic numbers are even worse. Nineteen percent of students are proficient in reading, and 1% — yes, 1% — are proficient in math. Elaine laughed when I asked why, and told me to guess the graduation rate. I guessed, “30%?” Nope, she said. “Seventy percent! They’re lying to our kids — graduating them without skills or basic competency.”
Even Barack Obama, who praised Dunbar during his presidency, chose instead to send his daughters to a $40,000-a-year private school. Elaine has been trying to get her kids into a better school but hasn’t had much luck in the My School DC lottery — they’re on the waitlist for several schools.
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“I have to educate my kids every night,” Elaine told me. “We do homework for hours, and I don’t make much money in my job as a director of a nonprofit. But if my kids need outside tutoring or help, I make sure they get it.”
I told Elaine that she sounded like one of those aspirational parents Sowell said benefited greatly from the Dunbar of old. “I know!” Elaine said. “We had it all figured out back then. Now we have this new rebuilding of the school from 2008 that cost $100 million, and it looks all nice — but where’s the substance, the meat on the bones for the kids?”
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Before I left to continue my walk, I asked her where she learned about Sowell. She exclaimed, “YouTube! My university! I typed in ‘school choice,’ and he came up. I started watching, and then I heard some people talking about his Dunbar story — and that’s when it really hit home. But I want America to know we still have so many aspirational people here.
We have to fix this broken system to free these people so they can achieve and excel.”
Amen.
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