Reply to This American Life about desegregation in schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Failing students? Did you listen to the show? The kids who have parents willing to travel 30 miles away do not have "failing students". It's the schools that are failing those kids.  For the most part, parents who are going to extremes to get their kids into better schools are doing so because they value education and want more for their children. They are not unlike you...they just don't have the money to live next door to you. Separate will always be unequal. [/quote]

Failing schools don't become failing by themselves.  It is students that make a school fail.

No one opens a new school and labels it failing.

The same with affluent white schools.  No one openeded on and said "this will be a good school".  There is no magic.

The parents work with their kids at home.  They tutor them, read to them, engage them in activities, volunteer at school, work in PTA, advocate for goid teachers and practices, fundraise for the school.  It's a lot of work.  It's not just this entitlement tfat the school owes them, it's also what you bring to the school.[/quote]

I taught in a failing school where many parents did all that you describe.  It was not enough to make up for the low quality of the administration and teaching staff, the outdated curriculum, the crumbling building, dysfunctional infrastructure, dearth of the most basic supplies, no library, no gym, lack of "specials" such a music and art, a playground that looked like a prison yard . . . I could go on.

You are 100% wrong about the value that poor people place on education because the vast majority realize it's the most reliable path to a better life. You're also wrong that they're not entitled to it - it's in the Constitution. But if parents are making efforts to instill that lesson at home, then the lesson that sinks in at a failing school is this:  you are not going to find that path here.  Yeah, there are some extraordinary kids who are able to overcome the psychological barrier that a failing school puts up every day - where just walking in feels like punishment - but by the definition of the word, everyone can't be extraordinary.  Kids as young as first grade know when they're in a shitty school (I know, my students told me).  The ones who can get out do so; the ones who can't are riding on a vicious cycle of low expectation that starts early and transcends generations.

The lesson in the TAL episode is that if kids can see the path, they're MUCH more likely to get on it.  And yeah, that's simplistic but empirically true.

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