Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

by Richard Grant

If whites had stuck with the public school system, things would be very different now in the Delta. When they removed their children, they also removed their money, influence, experience, and personal investment in the public school system. In rushed the influence of poverty. The Delta public schools started to experience similar problems as schools on Indian reservations, in crime-ridden inner cities, and the poorest, most isolated counties in Appalachia. All of the worst schools in America, without exception, are located in the highest areas of poverty, just as all the highest-performing schools are in the wealthiest zip codes. Statistically speaking, poverty produces bad parents and bad students, and the good ones are exceptions.