No matter how many times people say it, the phrase “good schools” will never not be racist/classist

[Anonymous]

to me. I just find it so grating and exclusionary. Does anyone else feel this way?

[Anonymous]

Not everyone has victim mentality.

[Anonymous]

Be part of the solution and put your kids in a school ranked 1 by Great Schools. See how that goes for them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has victim mentality.

Some people are conscious of people besides themselves.

[Anonymous]

What school do your kids go to right now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has victim mentality.

Some people are conscious of people besides themselves.

Hence, having victim mentality means being conscious of others. What do you do to help those that you falsely claim to have a conscious about? Absolutely nothing except pretend to care by talk and no action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has victim mentality.

Some people are conscious of people besides themselves.

Found the “victim.”

[Anonymous]

Your preference is to not have good schools? Is that your goal?

[Anonymous]

I went to an international school that was highly diverse in terms of nationalities and skin color, so to me the term good school is not racist at all. Now my kids go to publics in Bethesda, and none of the people we know are racist. We're white/Asian, and we know people from many different countries.

But I agree the term can be classist! And in a lot of areas of the US, the wealthy are paler-skinned than the poor, so I understand why so many people on here conflate the two. We'll just have to agree to disagree on the racism part.

[Anonymous]

When did the word good become a bad word and offensive? Can I not tell my children they did a good job? My dog is no longer a good boy? I can no longer ask if the milk in the fridge is still good? Are people now offended by one telling them good bye? What about good night?

[Anonymous]

I think that schools are one of the most prominent-in-daily-life manifestations in American culture of the way we've created structures that perpetuate race-based hierarchies regardless of the personal feelings any individual in the structure may have about race. I do believe there are a few people who use "good schools" as code for "predominantly white schools". I think there is a much larger group who assume that "good schools" are also "predominantly white schools" (which is a fact-based stereotype) and so are more subconsciously cautious when considering more diverse schools, and then there is a group who really just are thinking about school quality and "don't see race" (though this group is probably tiny).

At the end of the day, we live in a country that finances schools through local funds and in which the majority race of a neighborhood is a strong indicator of wealth. In addition, we have an approach to schooling that depends heavily on parental involvement, which favors families with parents who have time on nights and weekends (i.e. the types of jobs that are disproportionately white). You can say it's no one's fault or you can say it's everyone's fault. But either way, I think it's not helpful to accuse people of looking for highly-ranked schools of being racist...it's much more helpful to explore how to change the structures that lead to these racial correlations with school outcomes.

[NB: I reject the hypothesis out-of-hand that race in any way is a predictor of a child's potential to learn. There are many on DCUM who disagree and will try to couch it in terms of family structure to avoid saying what they actually mean.]

[Anonymous]

See, the weird part is that plenty of lower income people of color also want good schools for their kids, but I’m pretty sure they don’t want to themselves be excluded from those schools. Quite a mystery!

[Anonymous]

Is this a troll post?

Seriously, OP, are you lazily trying to bait the centrists into turning further away from the Dems?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this a troll post?

Seriously, OP, are you lazily trying to bait the centrists into turning further away from the Dems?

No, it needs to be discussed. It’s unfortunately a US-centric issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that schools are one of the most prominent-in-daily-life manifestations in American culture of the way we've created structures that perpetuate race-based hierarchies regardless of the personal feelings any individual in the structure may have about race. I do believe there are a few people who use "good schools" as code for "predominantly white schools". I think there is a much larger group who assume that "good schools" are also "predominantly white schools" (which is a fact-based stereotype) and so are more subconsciously cautious when considering more diverse schools, and then there is a group who really just are thinking about school quality and "don't see race" (though this group is probably tiny).

At the end of the day, we live in a country that finances schools through local funds and in which the majority race of a neighborhood is a strong indicator of wealth. In addition, we have an approach to schooling that depends heavily on parental involvement, which favors families with parents who have time on nights and weekends (i.e. the types of jobs that are disproportionately white). You can say it's no one's fault or you can say it's everyone's fault. But either way, I think it's not helpful to accuse people of looking for highly-ranked schools of being racist...it's much more helpful to explore how to change the structures that lead to these racial correlations with school outcomes.

[NB: I reject the hypothesis out-of-hand that race in any way is a predictor of a child's potential to learn. There are many on DCUM who disagree and will try to couch it in terms of family structure to avoid saying what they actually mean.]

I agree with you completely. I would add that an another problem - or perhaps the same problem in different words - is that the way we measure whether a school/system is good (usually test scores) favors certain demographics over others.