Campus fortress

More than 120 U.S. school districts, colleges, and universities have received tank-like armored vehicles, grenade launchers, M-16 assault rifles, and other excess military equipment they requested from the federal government. The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Department of Defense distributes dustbin-destined equipment to police departments that apply to receive it and pay shipping costs. Some school districts are so big they have their own police forces.

After parent and activist complaints spiked in September, Los Angeles school administrators agreed to return three grenade launchers. San Diego schools will return a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) intended for use if an active shooter invades a campus. Los Angeles, though, will keep its MRAP. Some 95 percent of equipment the military distributes is nontactical, such as sleeping bags, computers, and boats.

Meanwhile, homeschooling continues to grow. In North Carolina, homeschool enrollment increased 14.3 percent in the past year, and in Florida, the number of families homeschooling increased 4.6 percent. Homeschoolers now outnumber private-school students in North Carolina.

National data on homeschoolers is only refreshed every four years. The next is in 2015, so it’s hard to tell until then whether these increases are part of a nationwide trend. But that’s likely, because homeschooling has increased ever since researchers began tracking it.

This fall’s newbies are different, said Dawn Hartman, who runs a 500-family North Carolina homeschool group. In previous years, newcomers had pondered and researched their decision intensely. This year, families first decided, then asked, “Now what do we do?” Their reasons vary from school bullies to frustration with new Common Core curriculum and tests, Hartman said. Several mothers in her group also said they wanted to spend more time with their kids.

Other parents may want their children not to be in a place where MRAPs are needed. Here’s the unusual reason 13-year-old pianist Avery Gagliano is now homeschooled: Renowned Chinese musician Lang Lang selected her as an international music ambassador for his foundation, but the straight-A student’s globe-trotting for competitions and performances got her labeled a truant by her Washington, D.C., public school, despite her parents’ attempts to negotiate.

Parent power

In 1998, two black former community organizers squared off in Chicago at a lunch event. Both agreed poor children desperately need better education options. Barack Obama didn’t think vouchers would help. Howard Fuller did.

Fuller’s response to Obama, as recorded in his new autobiography: “You sit here and claim that we can make changes in the existing system? If you can do that, God bless you. But … those of us who are out there fighting are not going to wait for you to do that.”

By then, Fuller had been superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, where for decades few minority children learned reading and math fundamentals. Just before his tenure, Wisconsin had inaugurated the nation’s first school voucher program. Today, it’s the nation’s largest.

Fuller’s No Struggle, No Progress recounts how the former Black Power activist who quotes Malcolm X from memory came to believe parent choice could help lift the impoverished families he visited in shacks with no running water connected by dirt streets: “For me it’s a social-justice issue … trying to ensure that those families that have the least among us have some opportunity to choose the best environment for their children.” —J.P.