Racial egalitarians – that is, those who mandate equal outcomes rather than an objective level playing field – are flying high over the latest Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on K-12 school discipline.

This report, issued on April 4, again noted that there is a wide gap between the discipline actions taken against black students compared to white ones...and between boys and girls.  The report's summary is as follows:

These disparities were widespread and persisted regardless of the type of disciplinary action, level of school poverty, or type of public school attended.  For example, Black students accounted for 15.5 percent of all public school students, but represented about 39 percent of students suspended from school – an over representation of about 23 percentage points.

Actually, a truer picture would reveal an even greater discrepancy if teachers and administrators were not under tremendous pressure to look the other way regarding disruptive misbehavior of black students.  The data also grouped in many Hispanics with whites.  If the Latinos were filtered out, the disciplinary difference between whites and blacks would be much wider yet.  But let's skip those facts for now.

The intent of the GAO report is clear.  The GAO wants to establish by implication the idea that the racial disciplinary gap is due to the prejudice of teachers and administrators.  And if it's not the result of overt bigotry by individual teachers, then institutional racism is to blame.  A white kid sneezes, the class stops to look, and the kid isn't disciplined, while a black student who throws a book across the classroom at his clowning classmate goes to detention.  That's proof positive of institutional racism, isn't it?

It's reports like this that the Obama administration used as a pretext to threaten school districts across the country with loss of federal funding if they do not reduce (maybe even eliminate) the suspension and expulsion rates between blacks and whites.  Showing what must have been extreme restraint on their part, the Obama people did not get around to addressing the discipline gap between boys and girls.  If Hillary had won, who is to say that would not have been the next bridge to cross on the march to Utopia? 

Those with common sense and a taste of life experience know that the GAO report is fundamentally flawed.  It naïvely assumes that black students behave identically to white ones.  Probably even the authors of the GAO report know that, as groups, blacks and whites (and Asians) behave differently in a classroom setting – as well as on the street.  But like all good bureaucrats, their obedience is not to facts, but to an unforgiving political correctness.  To even insinuate that black behavior is the reason for the discipline gap is itself "racist" and would violate one of the sacred taboos the progressives have established for society. 

This most critical caveat on group behavior is not even mentioned in the report.  Instead, the GAO tries to pre-empt it by implying that its data have been normalized.  That is, "[t]hese disparities were widespread and persisted regardless of the type of disciplinary action, level of school poverty, or type of public school attended."  Statistically speaking, this is not just lame; it is dishonest.

Attempts to arbitrary equalize the rates of school discipline by race are another sorry example of the awful legacy from eight years of Obama socially engineering America to fit his politically correct, upside-down version of how the country should be.

One is justified in being cynical not only over this report itself, but also its timing.  It is coming just when Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration's secretary of education, is considering repealing Obama's directive on public school discipline.  This is something DeVos absolutely needs to do forthwith.  It would be her contribution to draining the swamp and introducing some sanity into K-12 education. 

On its website, the GAO claims to be "an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress."  The GAO may be nonpartisan but like the rest of the bureaucracy in Washington, it is far from non-ideological.  The current head of the GAO is Gene L. Dodaro, who was nominated to that position by Obama in 2010 to a 15-year term.  But even if one of the Bush presidents nominated the controller, who is head of the GAO, the result would be the same.  Political correctness, not adherence to the rule of law or facts, is the religion of the bureaucracy. 

Whether or not DeVos repeals Obama's discipline directive for the schools will tell us a lot.  Will she sail with the foul wind previously set by the Obamaites, or will she have the fortitude to go against it?