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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.][/quote]

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.[/quote]

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