Reply to This American Life about desegregation in schools

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "This American Life about desegregation in schools"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

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

[/quote]

Can you please explain then the situation I quoted earlier?  I live in a city in the South where every student in a failing school has a right to go to any other public school or some private ones for free.  We also have magnet schools.

Also, in my city the real estate is very cheap, we don't have the situation like in DC where you can't afford to live in a good school district.  You can.  You can rent an apartment in the best school area for $600, the houses are very affordable.  Right now I can buy a house in the best school district for $135,000.  Median income is around $50K.

Yet, we still ended up have with the same result.  Failing schools are black.  Thriving schools are white.

How do you explain this? Please do.[/quote]

I'm the PP you're addressing.  I don't know much about how schools are funded where you are, but providing families with the option to leave a school typically creates a Catch-22:  when a school's enrollment numbers fall, so do allocated dollar amounts.  So if a parent is unable to send their kid to a better school - because say, they don't have reliable transportation - then they're stuck where they are, with other students who have similar challenges and a school with fewer resources to meet them.  There are countless factors, all very much about race and not going away any time soon, exacerbating that problem.  Housing and employment discrimination are just a couple of entrenched factors that keep poor minorities trapped right where they are, but charters and school voucher programs are also siphoning funds from public schools where they're needed most.

People on this forum love to say parents just need to invest in home reading and get involved with fundraising.  But what happens when there are no books?  How do you raise funds from people who have none to give?  How do you get more parent involvement from people working 2-3 jobs just to pay rent?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics