If we ar eto wait for individual responsibility, than actual poor black kids with indivdiual responsibility in poor black neighborhoods are screwed. They can go to school and get staight As and graduate completely unprepared for college and with terrible scores on national tests (remember the kid they followed in teh NPR story had teacher actually teach him something on the day they follwoed him). So they get a job at Mcdondalds and work their way up to manager woking 50 demanading, demeaning hours a week for 30,000 a year (unelss Obama's new overtime rules go into effect). They burn out soon enough - imagine a life of managing fast food resturants ahead of you. So they give education another shot. Working 50 hour weeks of an unpredictablle schedule means they can't attend a traditional college (and rememeber they are academically underprepared anyway), so they get suckered into a degree in m,edical records at phoonix online. Now they owe 20,000 (if they didn't finsih) and 50,000 (if they did), and that gets them an 8.00 an hour job working in a medical office. The good news is they can eventually make 11 dollars an hour (25,000 a year) and the work isn't physically taxing. The bad news is they owe 50,000 and getting laid off or fired puts them in an difficult position because supervisors, who are mostly white, just tend to relate more and thus hire white employees. Maybe when they see you a balck applicant they think of the black DMV woman who gave them bad customer service. Not consciously but unconciosuly. Of coruse, the crappy white dmv worker doesn't taint their vision of prosective white employees the same way. So you better be exceptionally good and presentable.

Anonymous wrote:QUOTE " No. A high school education will get you a minimum wage job, and a high school education is not "serious less than ideal choices." Both the people I know who work these kind of crappy jobs are in their 30s or 40s without kids and living in apartments. Lower-level office workers or retail managers - so more than minimum wage but not great. They can't afford kids and can't find a decent man for two salaries (though these two salaries, if the guy is also working crap jobs, would put them in an impossible position for day care and college). I guess they are responsible not having kids because they can't afford them. But good god if I try to imagine my life without my kids. I'd rather die. They are my heart and job and reason for existing. I know these two women well."

I would much prefer NOT to have kids than have kids that end up like the ones in the show...or similar.
No money? No kids.
That's how it should be.

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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.

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.

This. 1 million x this. Please start taking ownership of your own failures as a community, white people are simply more involved in their child's education and results are for everyone to see. I understand that parents with struggling finances may not be involved much but that's true for struggling whites, AA, Asians, Mexicans etc. Financial issues treat every race more or less the same. No, this is not a race issue this is entitlement and failure to take responsibility as a community. Improve the culture of education within your community, then talk about schools. Education is too important to be left to the schools.

You really have no clue how well-to-do parents are so much more empowered to take on school systems and get what their kids need. Many poor parents who don't have good educations are much more likely to accept whatever the school system tells them because they don't know they have the right to demand something different. I tutored a kid whose family sent her brothers to a less than adequate charter school because of someone they met from that school on the metro. At least one of the kids should have been applying to the magnet schools in DC but his parents didn't know what their options were and just went with the path of least resistance. They are basically good people but they grew up believing that good people do what they're told. That would never fly with DCUMers who come from a very different class background.

Let's acknowledge that our class background gives us enormous advantages with regards to our children's education. Stop pretending there's a level playing field out there.

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You keep harping on this $600 a month rent in a great school boundary, so let's do some math together.

Our hypothetical family is a single mom and her two children, ages 2 and 6. Mom works 50 hours per week making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour (you said you're in the south so I'm going to assume that your state doesn't have a higher minimum wage). She makes $362/week, pre-tax (for the purposes of our exercise we won't worry about taxes). She works 52 weeks a year since she doesn't have any time off, so she makes an untaxed $18,850 per year. Her $600 rent is $7200 per year. Daycare for her youngest is $100/week since you are in a low COL area, or $5200/year. She's spending $12,400/year on rent and daycare. That leaves $6,450 left. That breaks down to $537/month to cover food, all bills, transportation, insurance (her minimum wage job obviously isn't providing insurance), before and aftercare, and everything else that she might need for her family to survive.

So no, that $600 a month rent in the best school boundary no longer seems so affordable. It's all relative.

What a bs numbers.

Low income single mothers get free day care, WICs and other forms of financial support. Possibly free housing because we have free public housing and someone is living there.

I have a niece who's a single mother of two. She doesn't even work, both of her kids get free daycare, she receives food stamps, and other benefits. She also is eligible for free college education, but is she getting it? No. I think we all know why. Because it's a question of motivation.

Also, if she's working 50 hours a week, she's making OT at 1.5x her hourly rate for 10 of those hours, so $398/week. While I am NOT trying to say this is a great way to live, let's at least be honest about the numbers.

no minimum wage employer is going to pay overtime. she is working two jobs, one 20 hours a week and one 30 hours a week. Or she is a salaried manager who has to be on the clock for 50 hours a week though she will likely make more then minimum wage in that situation but not much. I know someone who works retail, manager, scheduled 53 hours a week, 36,000 a year. And this isn't fast food - this is at a better retail place. you guys have no clue how grim the numbers really are

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How do you explain this? Please do.

You keep harping on this $600 a month rent in a great school boundary, so let's do some math together.

Our hypothetical family is a single mom and her two children, ages 2 and 6. Mom works 50 hours per week making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour (you said you're in the south so I'm going to assume that your state doesn't have a higher minimum wage). She makes $362/week, pre-tax (for the purposes of our exercise we won't worry about taxes). She works 52 weeks a year since she doesn't have any time off, so she makes an untaxed $18,850 per year. Her $600 rent is $7200 per year. Daycare for her youngest is $100/week since you are in a low COL area, or $5200/year. She's spending $12,400/year on rent and daycare. That leaves $6,450 left. That breaks down to $537/month to cover food, all bills, transportation, insurance (her minimum wage job obviously isn't providing insurance), before and aftercare, and everything else that she might need for her family to survive.

So no, that $600 a month rent in the best school boundary no longer seems so affordable. It's all relative.

I assume you are trying to argue that this hypothetical mom can't possibly be expected to volunteer at her kids' schools or do the things that more affluent parents say they do to help with school readiness and success?


Agreed. Where is the child support? One kid is a dumb "accident" but two is just stupidity. Assuming mom was always a minimum wage earner so why did she have a second kid? Honestly, if you dig deep enough it almost always goes back to bad choices. I worked in social services for one year and left when I realized that hands down, the biggest obstacle to getting out of pvoerty is having kids. Until cities/feds bascially hand out free birthcontrol at walk in locations all over the city this will not change. Ever. The War on poverty has failed because no one wants to restrict people having as many kids as they want.

I will get flamed for saying this, but I would argue that part of the problem is the single mother with two kids (ages 2 and 6) who cannot get (or keep) a job that pays more than minimum wage. She likely has made a serious of less than ideal choices that got her to this place. Why is she old enough to have a six year old but stuck in a $7.25 an hour job? Why is there no one else contributing to the household income? Why did she have the second child if she could not afford the first?

Miserable, depressed people don't make the best economic decisions. That goes for all races and classes. But when you're poor, one or two mistakes can ruin your whole life.