Democrats are too completely dependent on the teachers' unions to be able to break the public school monopoly or to get rid of incompetent teachers or even to insist on the teaching of the basics, instead of the dumbed down education and amateur social engineering that the education establishment likes.
Republicans have a golden opportunity to offer blacks something that the Democrats cannot possibly offer -- the right of parents to choose where their own children go to school.
Whatever political support there is for vouchers has come almost exclusively from Republicans. Democrats are totally opposed -- and have to be, if they want to continue getting the millions of dollars contributed by the teachers' unions.
Another factor in the decline of American education in general and education in low-income minority communities in particular, is the difficulty of either punishing or expelling disruptive and violent students who destroy the education of the other students. Liberal judges have made it literally a federal case when schools crack down on disruptive and violent students. Who appoints liberal judges? Usually Democrats, though Republicans have slipped up and appointed a few as well.
One of the other huge handicaps that black students face is the attitude that trying to learn is "acting white." Self-destructive as this notion may be, it is a logical corollary of the social vision that says whitey is out to get you and it doesn't matter how much you know or how hard you try. Which party panders to this victimhood vision? Which party cuddles up with race hustlers like Al Sharpton, who promote this paranoid tribalism? The Democrats in general and Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in particular.
These are the facts. But how much weight do facts carry on election day?