magic white people

Over at ktm - 1 we got to talking about magic white people at some point (scroll down), magic white people being middle and upper-middle class white parents who somehow manage to imbue their children with advanced K-5 knowledge and skills over the dinner table.

Judging by Monday's op-ed, white folks are getting more magical by the minute:

Schools serving mostly wealthy and white students have a distinct advantage when it comes to testing. Their students are far more likely to be raised in an environment that gives them the necessary tools to succeed on tests. They grow up with the intellectual abundance their wealth provides: books, educational videos and Baby Einstein games, to name a few. Having these resources may not make children smarter, but it does educate them in many of the skills -- such as letter sounds and addition facts -- that are covered on standardized tests. Knowing their students are likely to succeed on tests gives these schools freedom to teach higher-level thinking skills.

Who knew a child could learn phonics and phonemic awareness from Baby Einstein games?

If parents would just do their job and expose their kids to books, educational videos, and Baby Einstein games, dyslexia would go away tomorrow!

Of course, if we got rid of the tests we wouldn't have to worry about letter sounds at all.

We could go straight to higher-level thinking.