This American Life about desegregation in schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:all of you who think more kids (poor, black, or whatever) should be taken away from their families have no idea what foster care is like. The difference between the average foster family for DC kids (many of whom are placed in MD now) and the average birth family from which kids are removed is a LOT smaller than you'd think. I know kids in foster care who live with folks with criminal backgrounds, low education, and a whole mess of other problems. Some are loving and some are not. Some are amazing advocates for their kids and most are not. Removing kids from their birth families is sometimes needed, but expanding it is not the answer. Plus, it is hugely expensive. Stipends of $900+ a month per kid, day care vouchers, Medicaid, counseling, judges, social workers, CASAs, GALs, educational advocates, lawyers for birth parents, court reporters--the list goes on. For some families involved in the foster care system, if you just took all the money spent on the family by CFSA and related entities and mailed them a check each month, you would never have a problem with them again. And for some families if you gave them a million dollars a day, they would still beat or neglect their kids.

At least one of the PPs actually wants to sell black kids to white families who are unable to have children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It still isn't a life I would want to have but it is far from the grinding poverty of a third world country.

In the sense that there are no open sewers, I suppose you're right. But it is far from the life that my grandmother and her siblings had... and they grew up picking cotton in California's Central Valley. And yet... every one of them was able to go to college and prosper there because the high school in their poor farm town actually taught them well.

So, you may ask--did my grandmother become rich? Did she live the American dream?

Not really. She raised three kids with a husband in the merchant marine (before he died) and they were still pretty damn poor. But they read a lot of books. And being poor was not a crime then. It still isn't. It is not even a moral failing, despite the fact that so many of you seem hell bent on making it one.

My husband is from a third-world country. He has frail bones and teeth that sometimes break off (despite being in his 30s) because he was so severely malnourished as a child.

His family lived in a tin shack and it would get so hot inside that they had to spend most of the day outside. Everyone he knew had worms.

And yet, he came here as a minority refugee, his parents worked super hard (2-3 jobs at a time EACH) and put him and his 3 siblings through school. He got a scholarship to a small college, a scholarship to a better grad school, and now he's a professional and supports his parents.

I sort of scratch my head when AAs claim that there's no way to overcome the poverty and lack of opportunities. Of course there is. But I do feel super strongly that we need to be using tax money to support parents, daycares, preschools, schools, fund school lunches, etc. No one should have to have it as hard as my husband did. But I do also think everyone should be trying hard, it's not fair when people start feeling entitled to advantages.

PP here. Really, no one had a comment about this? It's not a race thing, it's a poverty thing. I think people who are much poorer, and are black, who come here with even bigger disadvantages, tend to prove it's a poverty thing and not a race thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that the only way for AA students to succeed is to be taken out of their environment. Because what really fails them is not the government, but their own families and community.

Their families make very bad choices like getting pregnant in high school, end up living in poverty, unable to take care of the kids, unable to educate them. Kids grow up among neglect, abuse, bad role models and lack of education values. And no school can fix it.

Are you suggesting that all Black kids should be taken away from their parents?

I very much hope not, but that's what it sounds like.

I am not the OP but there is a lot of truth in the statement. Unless, as a family and as a community those vicious cycles arent broken, there is not much schools can do. He/she is right, no school can fix this.

Agreed. I live in neighborhood in DC where it's a daily occurrence to see a teen mom walking down the sidewalk with her child, yelling and snapping at her child, using every curse word at her disposal, and certainly not in hushed tones. No shame. No sense of the awesome responsibility she has in serving as her child's parent. Can't imagine those kids are EVER read a book before bed. How do schools fix that level of abuse and neglect? The sad cycle continues.

I live in a neighborhood in DC where I also see young mothers walking down the sidewalks with young children, sometimes cursing, sometimes loud. I do not for a single second pretend that those moms are representative of the whole Black community, nor do I believe that the children should be removed from their mother because she yells at them and swears, and I certainly am not making any assumptions about whether or not she reads to them before bed.

Since apparently anecdotes are persuasive to you, I know several young single moms who live in my neighborhood. I've heard them curse at their kids. I also had a TWO HOUR conversation with one of them about preschool options in our neighborhood, when I saw her at the library, with her kids. I saw her again later, at the grocery store, with half a dozen children's books in the basket under her child's stroller. She was hurrying home to get her kids to bed. It was 7pm.

any parent who talks to their kids like that in public is probably a monster private, doesn't matter what time she gets her kids to bed. And yes, a LOT more kids should be taken from their parents, a lot sooner before permanent damage is done. FFS, a judge has Relisha Rudds mom on probation to determine if she should get her other kids back. WTF? THis is a mom who sold her kids for money, drugs whatever. She doens't care about her kids, school or even have a normal capacity for love. She herself was victimized in foster care her whole life. So yes, maybe just maybe the cycle could have been broken if these kids were removed much much sooner. Babies are always easier to adopt out than a 12 year who has been abused for 12 years straight. NO ONE said all black kids should be taken from their parents. There are plenty of white kids who need to be taken from their families too. A year ago there was a huge thread on DCUM about a Post article on an impoverished family in Kentucky, the kids were starving and living off of mountain dew. There was a baby in the family and all I could think was how selfish that mom was to not at least let the baby have a chance. Good social services would encourage this. There are thousands of families dying to adopt babies in this country. We might as well let them pay folks for them.

So, what you're saying is, the mom in question was taken out of her home as a young child and the "problem" wasn't fixed? How does this example help your argument??

When the mom was born to a drug addicted mother they should have severed the parental rights immediately and let her be adopted. Instead she grew up in chaos, then foster care, then had 4 kids (one with a man who killed a toddler by throwing her against a wall), then homeless, then selling her Relisha, then posting pics of piles of cash on facebook for weeks after, lying non stop to the school and social workers etc. And now she is fighting to get her other kids back and a judge is considering it. Shitty parents don't change. This kids need to be removed by age 1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you have entire areas that have been dysfunctional for decades and muliplte generations its the way to go
And before you call me racist there are plenty of rural white areas that have the same issues
It's concentrated levels of SES not race

Very true, but the issue becomes how do we solve that issue? I feel we solve it by providing them with options that now they dont have; giving them opportunities, If they dont take advantage of it FINE its their loss, but the opportunity to succeed should be there regardless.

[Anonymous]

People really get $900 for fostering a kid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that the only way for AA students to succeed is to be taken out of their environment. Because what really fails them is not the government, but their own families and community.

Their families make very bad choices like getting pregnant in high school, end up living in poverty, unable to take care of the kids, unable to educate them. Kids grow up among neglect, abuse, bad role models and lack of education values. And no school can fix it.

Are you suggesting that all Black kids should be taken away from their parents?

I very much hope not, but that's what it sounds like.

I am not the OP but there is a lot of truth in the statement. Unless, as a family and as a community those vicious cycles arent broken, there is not much schools can do. He/she is right, no school can fix this.

Agreed. I live in neighborhood in DC where it's a daily occurrence to see a teen mom walking down the sidewalk with her child, yelling and snapping at her child, using every curse word at her disposal, and certainly not in hushed tones. No shame. No sense of the awesome responsibility she has in serving as her child's parent. Can't imagine those kids are EVER read a book before bed. How do schools fix that level of abuse and neglect? The sad cycle continues.

I live in a neighborhood in DC where I also see young mothers walking down the sidewalks with young children, sometimes cursing, sometimes loud. I do not for a single second pretend that those moms are representative of the whole Black community, nor do I believe that the children should be removed from their mother because she yells at them and swears, and I certainly am not making any assumptions about whether or not she reads to them before bed.

Since apparently anecdotes are persuasive to you, I know several young single moms who live in my neighborhood. I've heard them curse at their kids. I also had a TWO HOUR conversation with one of them about preschool options in our neighborhood, when I saw her at the library, with her kids. I saw her again later, at the grocery store, with half a dozen children's books in the basket under her child's stroller. She was hurrying home to get her kids to bed. It was 7pm.

any parent who talks to their kids like that in public is probably a monster private, doesn't matter what time she gets her kids to bed. And yes, a LOT more kids should be taken from their parents, a lot sooner before permanent damage is done. FFS, a judge has Relisha Rudds mom on probation to determine if she should get her other kids back. WTF? THis is a mom who sold her kids for money, drugs whatever. She doens't care about her kids, school or even have a normal capacity for love. She herself was victimized in foster care her whole life. So yes, maybe just maybe the cycle could have been broken if these kids were removed much much sooner. Babies are always easier to adopt out than a 12 year who has been abused for 12 years straight. NO ONE said all black kids should be taken from their parents. There are plenty of white kids who need to be taken from their families too. A year ago there was a huge thread on DCUM about a Post article on an impoverished family in Kentucky, the kids were starving and living off of mountain dew. There was a baby in the family and all I could think was how selfish that mom was to not at least let the baby have a chance. Good social services would encourage this. There are thousands of families dying to adopt babies in this country. We might as well let them pay folks for them.

So, what you're saying is, the mom in question was taken out of her home as a young child and the "problem" wasn't fixed? How does this example help your argument??

When the mom was born to a drug addicted mother they should have severed the parental rights immediately and let her be adopted. Instead she grew up in chaos, then foster care, then had 4 kids (one with a man who killed a toddler by throwing her against a wall), then homeless, then selling her Relisha, then posting pics of piles of cash on facebook for weeks after, lying non stop to the school and social workers etc. And now she is fighting to get her other kids back and a judge is considering it. Shitty parents don't change. This kids need to be removed by age 1.

No one will argue she is a good parent. But what you are saying is quite disturbing. There are plenty of horrible parents, but the actions of one person should not be used to define an entire race! There are plenty of sensational stories out there involving different races, but those are not the norm. Somehow, those kind of stories about AAs are held up as the norm. Stop doing that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

PP, it's no use. Anecdotes are only persuasive to some of these PPs when it fits with the narrative of lazy, self-destructive AAs with a poor work ethic--otherwise, they'd actually have to face some uncomfortable societal truths related to haves and have-nots in our society. Their cognitive dissonance prevents this.

Although this thread is certainly depressing on one level, I'm also heartened that there are a fair amount of white PPs who seem to get it. For those PPs, I wonder how they came to this more complex, nuanced understanding of race in America? One PP mentioned having a black child, but for the others--was it podcasts such as this one? Conversations with black/Latino friends? Marrying someone of a different race? Whatever the reason, glad there is at least some progress on this front.

I found Ta-Nehisi Coates' article on reparations to be very eye opening. Not that I hadn't read any of the facts individually, but reading the whole story together was an 'aha' moment for me. I still struggle to understand exactly what it means, or what to do about it, but I found it very convincing to admit "there was and is a systemic problem". All else aside, I don't understand how people argue with that.

Make sure you read his new book too. His perspective on race is different from anything else I'd read before. It really should be required reading.

As an AA I thought I had settled on a way to deal with it all in your heart and mind and he just turned it inside out for me...in a good way.

[Anonymous]

For me it's very hard not to stereotype.

My first grader's teacher is AA. She's supposedly good and even was the teacher of the year in the county a couple years ago.

Yet I'm shocked how little they've been doing over the last two weeks. They do one sheet of CC math textbook a day at most. The only reading they do in class is silent when the teacher tells them to pick a book and silently read it. They mostly look at the pictures. There is no review of what they have read. A few days they wrote in journals. That's all. My kid is bored already and it's only been two weeks.

It's very hard to stop the bell in my head that goes "lazy teacher, lazy teacher".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For me it's very hard not to stereotype.

My first grader's teacher is AA. She's supposedly good and even was the teacher of the year in the county a couple years ago.

Yet I'm shocked how little they've been doing over the last two weeks. They do one sheet of CC math textbook a day at most. The only reading they do in class is silent when the teacher tells them to pick a book and silently read it. They mostly look at the pictures. There is no review of what they have read. A few days they wrote in journals. That's all. My kid is bored already and it's only been two weeks.

It's very hard to stop the bell in my head that goes "lazy teacher, lazy teacher".

WTF does this have to do w/the podcast? If you feel she's lazy ask what they're planning to do in the coming weeks - marking period or express your concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me it's very hard not to stereotype.

My first grader's teacher is AA. She's supposedly good and even was the teacher of the year in the county a couple years ago.

Yet I'm shocked how little they've been doing over the last two weeks. They do one sheet of CC math textbook a day at most. The only reading they do in class is silent when the teacher tells them to pick a book and silently read it. They mostly look at the pictures. There is no review of what they have read. A few days they wrote in journals. That's all. My kid is bored already and it's only been two weeks.

It's very hard to stop the bell in my head that goes "lazy teacher, lazy teacher".

WTF does this have to do w/the podcast? If you feel she's lazy ask what they're planning to do in the coming weeks - marking period or express your concerns.

+1. Also, do your child, your child's teacher and the rest of the world a favor and don't stereotype, even though it's "very hard." Your post basically says "My child has a black teacher who I think is lazy because my kid is bored, even though the teacher won a nation-wide award a couple years ago."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you have entire areas that have been dysfunctional for decades and muliplte generations its the way to go
And before you call me racist there are plenty of rural white areas that have the same issues
It's concentrated levels of SES not race

Very true, but the issue becomes how do we solve that issue? I feel we solve it by providing them with options that now they dont have; giving them opportunities, If they dont take advantage of it FINE its their loss, but the opportunity to succeed should be there regardless.

Isn't that what the charter system in DC is trying to do? Give parents another option to escape poor performing schools
No Child Left Behind was trying to do the same thing. Giving parents a waiver to move if the school failed for multiple years.
Thanks for focusing on trying to solve the isssue. It's easy to point fingers and play the victim card instead of trying to fix the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you have entire areas that have been dysfunctional for decades and muliplte generations its the way to go
And before you call me racist there are plenty of rural white areas that have the same issues
It's concentrated levels of SES not race

Very true, but the issue becomes how do we solve that issue? I feel we solve it by providing them with options that now they dont have; giving them opportunities, If they dont take advantage of it FINE its their loss, but the opportunity to succeed should be there regardless.

Isn't that what the charter system in DC is trying to do? Give parents another option to escape poor performing schools
No Child Left Behind was trying to do the same thing. Giving parents a waiver to move if the school failed for multiple years.
Thanks for focusing on trying to solve the isssue. It's easy to point fingers and play the victim card instead of trying to fix the issue.

I'm by no means anti-charter, but children in this country have a right to a public education. The system is broken for a lot of people, but I don't think that privatizing public education is the way to fix the problem of failing schools. My child attended a charter that we loved and now attends a Title 1 school in DC. I personally believe that charter schools should be limited to particular types of curriculum (Montessori, bilingual, Waldorf, etc.) or particular structures of school (boarding schools like SEED or Briya). I honestly think that schools like Inspired Teaching and Creative Minds should either be private schools or figure out a way to integrate with DCPS. They essentially both provide "traditional" education using a slightly different pedagogical model than other traditional schools use, but they are not doing anything that could not be accommodated within the public school system.

The reality is that not all children will be placed into "better" schools via the lottery. If people rely more and more on charters to escape the bad schools, the bad schools will stay bad because the people who ARE motivated to improve their circumstances will go elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:all of you who think more kids (poor, black, or whatever) should be taken away from their families have no idea what foster care is like. The difference between the average foster family for DC kids (many of whom are placed in MD now) and the average birth family from which kids are removed is a LOT smaller than you'd think. I know kids in foster care who live with folks with criminal backgrounds, low education, and a whole mess of other problems. Some are loving and some are not. Some are amazing advocates for their kids and most are not. Removing kids from their birth families is sometimes needed, but expanding it is not the answer. Plus, it is hugely expensive. Stipends of $900+ a month per kid, day care vouchers, Medicaid, counseling, judges, social workers, CASAs, GALs, educational advocates, lawyers for birth parents, court reporters--the list goes on. For some families involved in the foster care system, if you just took all the money spent on the family by CFSA and related entities and mailed them a check each month, you would never have a problem with them again. And for some families if you gave them a million dollars a day, they would still beat or neglect their kids.

At least one of the PPs actually wants to sell black kids to white families who are unable to have children.

sounds about right. in a 20 page thread you'd have to expect at least one.

[Anonymous]

New poster. This thread is fascinating.

I participated in the DME meetings on the boundary changes last summer. There was one elementary school in particular, in NW, that was very well-represented at the meetings. They had several issues they were pushing, but one was an attempt to avoid having a set-aside to ensure that "at-risk" children could enter their school through the OOB lottery. The policy proposal in question would have raised the poverty level at the school somewhat, but it likely would have remained in the single digits.

I am not saying that they were as bad as the guy in the podcast who suggested moving the school time 20-40 minutes earlier to discourage kids from bussing in, and I recognize that the at-risk kids in the DC debate would not often be honors students as they were in the story. Still, I was completely taken aback by how may parents in supposedly liberal, educated DC sincerely believed that a tiny percentage of at-risk kids would damage the experience of their children at this very high-performing school. Even when all research points to there being no ill-effects on students from wealthier families, especially when the poverty percentage is below 20%.

In our own neighborhood, a steadily growing number of families are participating in voluntary integration (aka sending kids to the neighborhood school), which I see as the only true solution to all of this, in addition to other forms of integration, especially real estate and workplace. But I am beginning to wonder if this is like taxes, and it cannot be a voluntary thing. Bussing did not succeed, but I wonder if some sort of mandatory integration is the only way. In this regard I am encouraged by the recent Supreme Court decision requiring public housing to be somewhat more spread out, per the article PP posted above about black poverty being the most concentrated. This move toward mandatory integration is a positive step.

When I read these threads I am struck by the lengths posters will go to paint the impoverished African American condition as being completely hopeless, beyond all possibility of remedy through education, health, housing, or any other policies. Despite there being strong evidence that progressive policies in all of these areas have shown results, for example integration of schools, or in the absence of that, charters that serve disadvantaged populations. The people writing these horror stories often use language intended to signal that the writer is a progressive, liberal. This is sometimes referred to as "sympathy trolling".

But I believe that the underlying motive, whether conscious or unconscious, is quite sinister. Essentially, the purpose of these "hopelessness narratives" is to argue against all policy measures that might be used to solve the problem, including policy measures that may cause discomfort for the writer, integration policies being chief among these.

Thank you to the OP for beginning this thread. It's been one of the more interesting DCUM discussions lately, and despite being depressing at times, it hasn't devolved into a name-calling contest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People really get $900 for fostering a kid?

Yes, in DC. http://www.nacac.org/adoptionsubsidy/stateprofiles/dc.html shows the rates: the lowest rate is over $1000 a month and it can go up for older or more medically complex kids. I don't begrudge foster parents that: maintaining a separate bedroom, feeding a kid, buying clothes and shoes and school supplies, transporting to visits and therapies and school and other stuff, and actually spending the time to raise a kid who's been through a lot should be compensated well. I would charge more than $35 a day on Air B&B to have a stranger come stay in my house, and I wouldn't have to feed that person or change its diapers.

But when you compare it to TANF, the difference is astounding. I think there are a lot of families involved in the foster care system who wouldn't be if the parents would get even a fraction of the foster care subsidy. A family with 2 foster kids gets at least $2021 a month. That same mom would get $427 a month in TANF if she'd given birth to those kids. Money would not solve everything. Plenty of rich families abuse or neglect their kids. But with an extra few hundred dollars a month, some families would have a lot more time, diapers, books, relaxation, and other things that really help.