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“That is simply factually false,” Gingrich declared. “The Detroit schools are the third or fourth most expensive schools in America. They’re a disaster.” Washington, D.C., schools — perhaps the most expensive in the country — don’t languish because of racism, Gingrich explained. They’re bad because D.C. “has an incompetent bureaucracy, a failed model of education, a unionized tenured system. It is utterly resistant to improvement. That has nothing to do with racism.”
He noted that when Newsweek asked Oprah Winfrey why she went to South Africa — and not south Chicago — to open a girl’s school, she responded: “I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys, they ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

Wow. He does get it. Well, I think a lot of pols get it but few will say it. Even Newt is being nuanced, but he's saying it here...the schools are bad for 2 reasons, one that a lot of conservatives will say publicly, and one that they won't:

1. Unions and bureaucracy (most will admit this)

2. The kids themselves have no willingness to learn. (Newt hasn't said it quite this bluntly but has alluded to it)