Appalachia Helps Where D.C. Fails

What's really at stake?

Natasha Cabrera, a professor of human development at the University of Maryland, said it well in an e-mail last week. "The real tragedy is that the decaying D.C. public school system is making sure that the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen. It is the most effective mechanism we have to perpetuate social and economic inequalities in our society."

In the past decade, the school system has had six superintendents and an elected, appointed and now hybrid school board. And it has been studied to death.

What's been missing? In a word, leadership. A school system in crisis needs a leader who acts accordingly; a decisive, child-focused school chief who's in it for results.

The District needs a leader who is brave and relentless enough to take on the entrenched school bureaucracy and who won't cave under pressure, whether the source is a special-interest group, a union or the media. In other words, someone who doesn't need the job.

Forget governance structure. Do we have that kind of leader in the house, or do we leave it to Appalachian State?

kingc@washpost.com