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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am amazed by the thinly veiled racism on this thread. I hope that all of you talking about avoiding "the ghetto" or "free and reduced lunch" are really just using euphemisms for "people of color" and you sound like bigots. [/quote]

I'm the poster who used "free and reduced lunch." I explicitly avoided mentioning race, because there's plenty of poor white trash where I'm from that I am reluctant to have my kids around either.

I'm also not one who'll freak out over a FRL percentage greater than 5%. Some folks are poor, and let's face it -- it's probably not ideal to be in an extreme low-poverty environment.

But once that percentage starts creeping up above 40-50%, you gotta start wondering. Will your kid be busy teaching his classmates the English he learned at 3-4? Will the teacher be teaching a 3rd grade class at a 1st grade level? Will the parents simply not be committed to education (come on, they can't ALL be hard-working folks who've just met a little misfortune?) In some cases, you can give it a try, but in others, you just get the vibe that the administration is all about the at-risk kids and yours is going to get ignored unless he is in the top 10% of self-starters.

But for full disclosure, since I'm a bigot and all, where do YOU live and send your kids to school? [/quote]

I am a the PP you are responding to. I realize what you are saying, and those are valid concerns. When backed up by your thought process, rather than just thrown out, they sound much less bigoted. Also, I don't know you, have no idea if you are a bigot or not. I was not calling you one. I was simply stating that comments like yours, when set apart from any knowledge of your deeper thought processes, makes you sound like one.

I live in Mount Pleasant with an infant. Not sure where the little one will go to school when the time comes. Also not sure how that has any bearing on my opinion about racist comments.[/quote]

I also called things ghetto and talked about reduced lunches. It has nothing to do with race, it has everything to do with the fact that with poverty comes crime. We can't deny it. COME ON! OPEN UR EYES. [b]And a high rate of kids who don't speak English is a problem too b/c the teachers spend more time helping them than keeping up with the class. [/b][/quote]

You might want to familiarize with ESOL in Fairfax County and how it works before saying things like this.  In Fairfax County, students who know little to no English are in their own separate ESOL classes.  They are not just thrown in with the general population for mainstream teachers to deal with.  It is not until they have at least an intermediate level of English, that they go into mainstream classes where they generally are some of the top students in the class - IMO because they have worked so hard to get there.  We do have students who are beginning students of English and basically illiterate in their native language and they will never move into mainstream classes because they don't have the skills to do so (this is in high school).  Usually they end up dropping out because of their age or just general frustration.  Fairfax County is actually very strict about the skills ESOL students need to go to mainstream classes - much more so than other counties in the area.  [/quote]

I taught 1st and 2nd grades in FCPS for 5 years, ending in 2008.  Certainly, FCPS has a great ESOL program and the county puts plenty of money toward extra support for those kids.  But I can tell you from firsthand experience that there were several kids in my classroom each year who only got pull-out ESOL services maybe an hour a day and whose English proficiency could NOT be described as fluent.  And yes, those kids did sometimes require additional attention.  But as a PP pointed out, lots of English-speaking kids need additional attention too--some don't pick things up as quickly, some are gifted, some are prone to acting out, and some are just emotionally needy.

I do have to take issue with PP's ridiculous statement that the ESOL students are "generally" the top kids in the class because they've worked so hard to get there.  Maybe it happens later on in high school, but I never once saw it happen in 5 years at the elementary level.  I don't even think I ever had an ESOL student even be considered for a GT center.  (Not saying that's right, just saying PP is overgeneralizing.)[/quote]

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