Anonymous
Post 01/01/2012 16:15     Subject: Re:s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Going out on a limb here to offer another reason why SOME parents MIGHT BE concerned about FARMS --- not related to race or test scores. Here it goes: many FARMS families are struggling to juggle work, etc. and thus they aren't active in the school or the PTA -- and this has an impact on the school. I know this b/c I have friends at Title I schools --- to give you some background: these folks are upper middle class-educated-English speaking folks --- and their two cents is that while the teachers are good and the curriculum is the same as the fancy pants schools in Potomac (in fact, some might even say better b/c they get extra perks like small class size and special resources for the classrooms), the PTA is barely functional and they are expected to shoulder the burden to keep things functional. As an example, when one friend's child started at a Title I school this fall and the teacher noticed she was the only native English speaking parent in the class, she quickly became the go-to parent for everything (field trips, class projects, parties, etc.). When househunting, I purposely sought a school district with a mix of working and SAHMs for two reasons: neighborhoods with lots of SAHMs tend to have schools with lots of parent volunteers, fun events, and a strong PTA; and since I work and can't volunteer regularly I wanted to be sure the neighborhood had enough nice SAHMs who were active in the school. So, there are other reasons besides race and test scores that folks consider.
Anonymous
Post 01/01/2012 14:46     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Every child is not worth the same?


The answer is no on two fronts. First, as evidenced so clearly on this thread, wealthy parents deem children from poor and working class families as inferior and so not suitable for playing with Jack and Jane.

Secondly, kids from poor families go to schools that are essentially ghettos for poverty and so individual schools end up shouldering the burden of very concentrated levels of poverty. This results in a poorer quality education for all of the students attending these schools because these schools have to expend a great deal of time and resources dealing with the challenges that come from dealing with high levels of poverty within the school population. The County knows this but opts to do nothing about it because integrating schools by socio economics angers wealthier families and the County cares a great deal more about wealthier tax payers.

In this country if you are poor you matter less. And that goes for your kids too.

so, less well off children are: shunned by the parents in the class
and, the county is happy to dump them in poorly performing schools
i.e. bad schools and nobody cares
zip code + household income = high iq?


Sorry to disillusion you, but this is the entire reason we have local school districts, and school boundaries within those school districst
Anonymous
Post 01/01/2012 14:45     Subject: Re:s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:What frightens me is that a long thread has to be created to answer such a self-evident question.

Here posters are hand-wringing, talking about stereotypes and apologizing for making obvious statements. Please, OP move to Southeast DC where they spend more money on schools than anywhere in the country and you can buy a SFH for cheap. The median income is nice and low and we all know that God made human beings all the same.

No wonder our country is failing. People like the OP vote.


Low-income equals greater number of special education students. Higher concentration of poverty correlates to higher costs educating a population. So, yes, of course they spend more money on schools in SE DC than anywhere else in the nation. Why on Earth would you think otherwise? It's like saying we spend 2% more per capita in the nation's cancer wards than we do in the nation's general internal medicine departments, therefore cancer wards should have their funding cut.

Even if the student population in DCPS were as amenable to education as mostly-affluent student bodies, the dollar per student figure doesn't adjust for the fact that most of the state level education costs are rolled into that figure--unlike in local school districts.
Anonymous
Post 01/01/2012 14:24     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:Every child is not worth the same?

In this country if you are poor you matter less. And that goes for your kids too.
That is just awful
Why do you not say that we live in a plutocracy and the poor must know their place and accept it that their kids at most will become truck drivers and street sweepers
Anonymous
Post 01/01/2012 07:01     Subject: Re:s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
What frightens me is that a long thread has to be created to answer such a self-evident question.

Here posters are hand-wringing, talking about stereotypes and apologizing for making obvious statements. Please, OP move to Southeast DC where they spend more money on schools than anywhere in the country and you can buy a SFH for cheap. The median income is nice and low and we all know that God made human beings all the same.

No wonder our country is failing. People like the OP vote.
Anonymous
Post 01/01/2012 01:42     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Every child is not worth the same?


The answer is no on two fronts. First, as evidenced so clearly on this thread, wealthy parents deem children from poor and working class families as inferior and so not suitable for playing with Jack and Jane.

Secondly, kids from poor families go to schools that are essentially ghettos for poverty and so individual schools end up shouldering the burden of very concentrated levels of poverty. This results in a poorer quality education for all of the students attending these schools because these schools have to expend a great deal of time and resources dealing with the challenges that come from dealing with high levels of poverty within the school population. The County knows this but opts to do nothing about it because integrating schools by socio economics angers wealthier families and the County cares a great deal more about wealthier tax payers.

In this country if you are poor you matter less. And that goes for your kids too.

so, less well off children are: shunned by the parents in the class
and, the county is happy to dump them in poorly performing schools
i.e. bad schools and nobody cares
zip code + household income = high iq?
Anonymous
Post 12/31/2011 13:18     Subject: Re:s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
I hope and would like to think that these fears - of poorer students and higher percentages of minorities being factors to avoid when looking at schools - will diminish as my generation (30 yo) and younger buy houses, raise children, and send them to school. We live in an increasingly mixed race, multicultural, economically stratified (between rich and everyone else) society, I think racism is lessening among younger people, people perhaps want to live more modestly than years past and not be saddled with large debt - all of which could add up to firmly middle class people being more accepting of living amongst those who are less well off financially. I and many of my friends are comfortable with moving into "transitional" areas, which are much cheaper than say bethesda, because of the things i mentioned, and slso because there are a lot of these types of areas within pretty good commuting distance to our jobs in DC. Anyway, because the DC metro area is very urbanized, you'd have to go pretty far out to get to affordable middle class white suburban enclaves if that was what you wanted. Metropolitan areas are about diversity, and trying to avoid that diversity is a costly and perhaps isolating endeavor.
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2011 11:38     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:In a lot of cases FARMS are minorities but that is not always the case. Often times a community with trailer parks will have a lot of white FARM students. If you go to rural communities the FARM students will often be white their as well. Perhaps, not what you see in MOCO but you do see it in other counties in MD.

I agree with some of the bullets but not all. At the end of the day, I do not care if the kids are poor, but I do care if the school environment is dangerous. If there isn't an expectation that the majority of the students will go to college or when the kids do not have realistic hopes and dreams for the future.

I would happily have my child associate with poorer families who believe in the American dream and are striving to achieve it. I also would like my kid to avoid hanging out with kids or families who are about nothing.

I think a big difference in FARMS families; there are the hard working poor kids vs. the 30 year grandmother who 15 year old just had a child. Unfornately, the first group of kids get lumped in with the second.

Also the bullet about school policy is true. I must admit I hate when schools have separate awards for black or hispanic achievement but I guess I'm in the minority on this point. While I applaud the administrators for trying to give the child encouragement and a sense of accomplishment, in the end, I think it sends the message that you are not capable of competing equally with your counterparts so we must set the bar lower.

Flame away.


Agree!
Anonymous
Post 12/30/2011 11:20     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:Every child is not worth the same?


The answer is no on two fronts. First, as evidenced so clearly on this thread, wealthy parents deem children from poor and working class families as inferior and so not suitable for playing with Jack and Jane.

Secondly, kids from poor families go to schools that are essentially ghettos for poverty and so individual schools end up shouldering the burden of very concentrated levels of poverty. This results in a poorer quality education for all of the students attending these schools because these schools have to expend a great deal of time and resources dealing with the challenges that come from dealing with high levels of poverty within the school population. The County knows this but opts to do nothing about it because integrating schools by socio economics angers wealthier families and the County cares a great deal more about wealthier tax payers.

In this country if you are poor you matter less. And that goes for your kids too.
Anonymous
Post 12/29/2011 09:28     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
In a lot of cases FARMS are minorities but that is not always the case. Often times a community with trailer parks will have a lot of white FARM students. If you go to rural communities the FARM students will often be white their as well. Perhaps, not what you see in MOCO but you do see it in other counties in MD.

I agree with some of the bullets but not all. At the end of the day, I do not care if the kids are poor, but I do care if the school environment is dangerous. If there isn't an expectation that the majority of the students will go to college or when the kids do not have realistic hopes and dreams for the future.

I would happily have my child associate with poorer families who believe in the American dream and are striving to achieve it. I also would like my kid to avoid hanging out with kids or families who are about nothing.

I think a big difference in FARMS families; there are the hard working poor kids vs. the 30 year grandmother who 15 year old just had a child. Unfornately, the first group of kids get lumped in with the second.

Also the bullet about school policy is true. I must admit I hate when schools have separate awards for black or hispanic achievement but I guess I'm in the minority on this point. While I applaud the administrators for trying to give the child encouragement and a sense of accomplishment, in the end, I think it sends the message that you are not capable of competing equally with your counterparts so we must set the bar lower.

Flame away.
Anonymous
Post 12/29/2011 08:22     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Of course FARMS has to do w/ race. Most of the kids in MCPS on FARMS are minorities. They are intertwined.

"I will say that as a kid growing up in MCPS in the 80s we couldn't care less about the kids eating a free lunch and breakfast. "

That may be because the % of low income kids in the county was dramatically lower back then so you may not have had the same worries about concentrations of FARMS populations in so many schools.

Totally agree w/ #3 in the bullets a PP posted.
Anonymous
Post 12/28/2011 16:44     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:FARMS has nothing to do with race. I dont give a crap if you are brown red green purple or ipod, if there are HIGH farms in a school the test scores and quality of the education is lower than those with Low FARM rates.


Note to 15:23, see #4 in 14:58.

It's called reading comprehension. Live and learn.
Anonymous
Post 12/28/2011 15:23     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
FARMS has nothing to do with race. I dont give a crap if you are brown red green purple or ipod, if there are HIGH farms in a school the test scores and quality of the education is lower than those with Low FARM rates.
Anonymous
Post 12/28/2011 15:21     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
Anonymous wrote:Every child is not worth the same?

correct, because their potential value to society is predetermined by their parent's current value to society
Anonymous
Post 12/28/2011 15:12     Subject: s/o Why are parents around here so worried about kids who receive free lunch?
6) The know that just as in #2 above where Free Lunch is used as a code-word to continue outdated, racist social experiments (ie Rosemary Hills), that Free Lunch can also be used as a pseudo-metric to discuss, in polite company, the racial and cultural make-up of a school and whether it's the proper environment for Johnny.

I'm sure these have pissed of people on both sides of the aisle, but the truth shall set you free.