Reply to Achievement gap continues to grow between high- and low-income schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You'd be wrong.  Our school has &gt; 90% FARMS.  &gt; 50% ESOL.  And it's not a cake walk.  It's not all working out just fine.  We're planning to move to a better school district because of it.  But talking about a group of people as if they alone are to blame for poverty and language barriers isn't helpful.  Why do you have more of a right to access public education than any of those families?  For me it's not enough to say that because a child's parents violated immigration laws, we ought to feel resentful towards them and treat them like they're stealing all of our public services.  Maybe we disagree on that point, but to me that is what feels like race-baiting.  Talking about who pays what in taxes and who's a freeloader etc. - that's where it starts to feel like hate and seems to be drifting away from the underlying issue of how to deal with population growth and poverty in a compassionate way.  And I totally agree that it has an undeniable impact on the schools.  I'm not pretending it doesn't.  But please can we stop with the finger pointing about who is wrongfully availing themselves of public services. [/quote]

To clarify, I'm 8:46, not the poster immediately above who discussed illegal immigrants / public services / resources in regard to schools.  I'm not race baiting. Having compassion for kids of illegal immigrants - or legal immigrants (many of the kids in my neighborhood school are LEGAL immigrants) - and expressing worry about the impact of that on the school system and local resources are not mutually exclusive.

To say that immigration has affected the school system is a fact.  To say that a large and rapid growth in population of ESOL and FARMs kids hits a school hard is a fact.  We can talk about ways to mitigate the causes (and I have no clear idea on what those would be since I'm certainly pro-legal immigration and love the diversity of my part of Silver Spring) but until we have solutions, our schools suffer.  Resources in Montgomery County aren't infinite, particularly not as it relates to the public school system.  The question is how do we manage the influx of poor / non-English speaking kids without comprimising the overall quality of education?  I wish I had the answer - I'd bottle it and sell it!

Expressing that isn't race baiting.  It's a concern for many of us and particularly those of us who don't have the financial means to seek alternatives.  Moving for my family would be a tremendous hardship and personal sadness.  I love this area.   Private school isn't financially feasible.

But more to the point, I'm a big believer in public school education and want my kids to get the best possible public school education ... But that's not going to happen for us in our local elementary school and a lot of that is because of the large population of non-English / low SES students and how that has transformed the classroom environment.  I don't envy the administrators and educators who are facing those issues.  But you can't fix the systemic issues unless you name the problem.   [/quote]

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