Reply to School Segregation and the Boundary Issues

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[quote=Anonymous]Children in crisis is not in just DC.  My sister had three kids removed from parents when she was teaching because of meth and that was in SLC, UT.   She also said it felt awful because these kids struggled to learn anything and she did not know how to reach them.

I think most teachers in any SES stressed area will find 5-10% of kids are in circumstances where learning is that compromised.  What I found with some volunteering experiences in South East is that these children disproportionally took over the class with behavioral problems because it was the only method they had to demand the world pay attention to their internal crisis.

The majority of children in these classrooms  can learn and do well if teachers have the supports for the other children.  That takes money, organization and priorities.

There are plenty of single parents who want their kids to learn, work really hard at low wage jobs and pull together a respectable life, but their children's lives and opportunities are compromised by the pathologies of the neighborhood.   The last 30 years have been about stripping services out of these neighborhoods, yes even here in liberal DC.  The general rate of inflation nationally may be low, but for the poor it has been very high in the core products they consume- housing, fuel, food.

Then you go back to who teaches in these hard schools, the newest, least experienced or just as often, burned out, pushed out, just waiting for a pension.   There are a handful of amazing teachers in many of these schools, but cumulative years of poor teachers are difficult to make up.

Now let's look at your kids-  Probably both parent, probably grandparents, solid schools, at least one or more educational camps over the summer, generally pretty good nutrition, even if not whole foods- fruits and vegetables at most meals.  Your vocabulary because you have at least a bachelor's if not a masters is about 10 times the single mom above who has a high school degree.   You make sure to read to your kid, your home has a selection of interesting reading material from a bookstore or library and your children see you read.  If you are the single mom, maybe you go to the library, but you worry all the time your kid will loose a book and you will have to pay so you limit them to two books and you go less often to the library.  Sometimes you buy books for you kid but your selection is limited to what is available at the grocery store and Target or Walmart. There are not bookstores East of 16th street going all the way into Prince Georges County.

You have video games, but you limit them, you buy educational games like minecraft.  If you are the  single mother you have a DS for your child because you saved for it, but you certainly not focusing on educational games and you may be thinking a lot less about the trade off with reading.

It doesn't take long to see how there are several years difference in attainment by the time a kid reaches 6th grade even for the average single mom that really cares, through in a parent that really doesn't have it together and you get the 7th grade that reads at 2nd grade.

None of these problems is ever solved, many can be mitigated, but it takes more than "no excuses" slogans, it take more than the Union constantly fighting, it takes more than rich people saying my poor immigrant uncle.  It takes a societal shift that says these kids matter, how do we change the trajectory.

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