I'm only going to argue this point. I could claim an idea is bad because I disagree with the idea. Let's say you say that something is racist and I disagree and we have an argument about whether that thing is racist or not. The article claims (among many other things) that there are racist undertones here.
However, that's not my point here. The problem here is the article claimed to talk about A (school reform) but spent 70% of it's page space on B (things suck, and racism is involved). And I didn't care about B when the author promised me A and the author DID NOT ACTUALLY COVER A. I'm not attacking the B idea, just the inconsistency of the whole writing.
Malcom Gladwell (for example) covers institutional racism in schools VERY WELL in his podcast Revisionist History. He delivers B quite successfully. And I'm sure other authors are great at discussing B if they want to.