In Teabagistan Schools Will Be Segregated

[Darat]

Wouldn't it be easier to just move the poor people out to the suburbs?

Or let the parents with poor kids sell them to the school canteens? That would help reduce their budget deficit and solve the problem of too many poor kids at the schools.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

But I'm pointing out that it adds nothing positive to the discussion. In fact, it lowers the discourse.

Why do that?

I don't agree. I think the Tea Party radical fringe is the discussion. You are welcome to take the position the new school board members have legitimate ideas and the rationalization putting all the poor kids in a couple schools and out of the schools where the better off kids don't have to mingle with them is really in the poor kids best interest. I'd be interested in what you see in that idea.

But I see one aspect of the Tea Party movement, that of no social responsibility, poor people deserve it and it's their fault for not working hard enough, as the actual underlying issue here. The end result, IMO, is a worse outcome for all of us. All the costs you save removing social safety nets you pay out double in prison costs and increased health care costs because you ended preventative care for a large segment of the population.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Could any of this be seen as a cost saving effort? Really all the planning, busing, etc. probably takes money out of the educational coffers. Is it really segregation to let people go to school closer to their homes?

I'm not a tea partier, or republican for that matter, and the thought that my kid might be riding a bus for hours a day seems a little silly...

Did you read the paragraph I quoted? The cost of bussing would not change much at all. 90% of the kids taking the bus to school now take the bus to the school closest to them. My son took a bus to school and it was to the schools closest to our house.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
But hey, the racism charge is much easier to play than figuring out whether or not your policy preference actually works better.

Right, because the fact the vast majority of the poor kids were ethnic minorities doesn't matter if you ignore that fact.

 

[TraneWreck]

In Teabagistan, tea bags you!!!

And all white people are victims.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

How come no one's talking about the fact that the neighborhoods in this community (as they are everywhere in America) are segregated? If society should be all about "diversity" and "equality," why doesn't anyone advocate for building affordable/public housing within the "richer" districts? If the neighborhoods were integrated, then the schools would be too, right?

That is advocated in many cities including the one I live in. Big housing developments are required by building codes to include a certain percentage of lower cost housing including big rental complexes.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

They should sell it as a carbon-reducing effort to get liberals on board.

They do make electric busses.

 

[Ziggurat]

Right, because the fact the vast majority of the poor kids were ethnic minorities doesn't matter if you ignore that fact.

Did I say it didn't matter? No, I didn't.

But whether or not it matters (and you haven't explained why it matters), that doesn't mean the motivation is racism. You'd have a much better leg to stand on if you argued for classism (although even there the charge is unproven, to put it charitably), but that just doesn't have the same bite to it.

 

[fuelair]

Could any of this be seen as a cost saving effort? Really all the planning, busing, etc. probably takes money out of the educational coffers. Is it really segregation to let people go to school closer to their homes?

..

It is if either economics or "finding a truly qualified buyer for a home in this neighborhood"* controls where people/neighborhoods happen to be and all the persons of color "happen"** to be in an area we happen to have just enough money to build a school building and put a few supplies in.


*a person of the trusted lighter skin tones who speaks English well

**coincidentally because they can't seem to be able to locate or fund housing in areas where lighter skinned good speakers of English just randomly seem to be located.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Exactly this.

Similarly, if all schools received equal per-pupil funding rather than underfunding schools with poor children, and teachers were randomly assigned within the district rather than the best teachers getting to teach at the wealthiest schools, the demographics wouldn't be nearly as important.

My son went to the same grade school Bill Gate's kids would go to if they weren't in private schools (and I don't know if they are or not). The PTSA held a silent auction fundraising benefit. It was a $50/plate dinner, and the auction raised over $100,000. The demographics will always be important.

But I agree with you in principle. There's no reason we can't make our schools more equal.

This school district (and many others) have used other means to attract richer kids to poorer schools. They developed magnet programs, so to get in Spanish immersion or advanced physics that program would be offered in certain schools. It's a very effective program that addresses unequal schools. The district in the OP had such a program in place. The vast majority if not all of the desegregation was voluntary using this kind of program motivation as near as I could tell.

What I'd like to know is how many of the concerns the Tea Party affiliated parents were concerned about were real problems vs perceived problems. I get the impression the concerns are mostly imagined and bigotry if not bias against the poor may indeed be the actual underlying reason for the perception.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

From the economist

And so we see a tension within the policy preferences of the Tea Party conservatives. They seem to see bussing plans as an infringement on their liberty. But systems that prevent some schools from becoming concentrations of students in poverty produce better education outcomes for a given level of spending. Poor schools have dreadful outcomes and tend to require expensive remediation efforts. And as students in those schools fall behind, additional pressure is placed on public services at other levels of government—support for poor and unemployed adults, for instance, not to mention greater spending on public safety and imprisonment.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I believe he's talking about forced busing to artificially create racial integration in schools.
Of course, we know that in this case the artificial integration was based on economics, not race. So the policies in place were not racist.

Except that was not going on in this school district. This goes to my above comment about perceived wrongs that aren't real.

Officials blame this on the unprecedented growth, but parents blame the diversity goal

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Did I say it didn't matter? No, I didn't.

But whether or not it matters (and you haven't explained why it matters), that doesn't mean the motivation is racism. You'd have a much better leg to stand on if you argued for classism (although even there the charge is unproven, to put it charitably), but that just doesn't have the same bite to it.

Come on Zig. Your whole post was claiming there was no racism behind the desire to change the diversity policy. And yet ethnic minority just happened to coincide with economic divisions.

It doesn't even matter. The real issue isn't whether the Tea Party associated parents don't want their kids mingling with blacks or mingling with poor kids, such parents certainly see some kids in school with their children that they don't like if they are suggesting concentrating them all in a few schools.

It's possible the parents had legit complaints about school transfers. Parents get real defensive about that sort of thing. The school district says the issue was the changing population, first it decreased then there was "unprecedented growth". The district said the diversity goals were not the reason for the changed assignments. Changing populations is a common reason for changing school assignments. It's happened around here many times and every time the district wants to close a school, parents rise up in emotional protest. Diversity goals don't have squat to do with it.

And magnet schools were used to make achieving diversity goals voluntary, not "forced bussing".


The truth is out there. Maybe instead of rationalizing bigotry, you could dig up some evidence the diversity goal really was the problem underlying too frequent school assignment changes. I find the population shifts a more plausible explanation.

 

[Ziggurat]

Come on Zig. Your whole post was claiming there was no racism behind the desire to change the diversity policy.

Nope. I'm saying there's no evidence of racism in the linked article. And there isn't. Nor have you presented any.

It doesn't even matter. The real issue isn't whether the Tea Party associated parents don't want their kids mingling with blacks or mingling with poor kids, such parents certainly see some kids in school with their children that they don't like if they are suggesting concentrating them all in a few schools.

You too are apparently ignoring the stated reasons for opposition to the old policy. How... convenient.

It's possible the parents had legit complaints about school transfers.

But you'll ignore that possibility and blame it all on racism, because hey, that's what you do.

The truth is out there. Maybe instead of rationalizing bigotry, you could dig up some evidence the diversity goal really was the problem underlying too frequent school assignment changes. I find the population shifts a more plausible explanation.

And maybe instead of accusing people of bigotry without any evidence you could find some evidence.

Oh, who am I kidding.

 

[hgc]

That article has some problems, and your interpretation of that article has some serious problems. Let's start with one of the problems of the article:

"The situation unfolding here in some ways represents a first foray of tea party conservatives into the business of shaping a public school system, and it has made Wake County the center of a fierce debate over the principle first enshrined in the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education: that diversity and quality education go hand in hand. "

That's not what Brown v. Board was about at all. It wasn't about diversity, it was about discrimination. Now, one could certainly adopt the position that diversity enhances education quality, but that is not, and never was, what that supreme court case was about. Major error.

You are right. It should have said that integration and quality education go hand-in-hand. Minor error.

Now on to YOUR error, starting with the thread title. This isn't about segregation. Segregation means students of different races are forces by government into different schools based on their race. But that isn't what's at issue here. Nobody is talking about re-segregating schools. As Brown v. Board already proved, the school board doesn't have that power even if they wanted to. What they're talking about doing is stopping (or scaling back) bussing. Which would bring that district into line with most of the country. Now, that may or may not be a bad thing, but it is not segregation. Hell, even the article points out that the objection isn't really about race, it's about economics:

You're making up definitions. Segregation does not necessarily mean that "students of different races are forces by government into different schools based on their race." The effect of only sending children to neighborhood schools, when the population is geographically segregated, is the segregation of the schools.

"Without a diversity policy in place, they [critics of the new board] say, the county will inevitably slip into the pattern that defines most districts across the country, where schools in well-off neighborhoods are decent and those in poor, usually minority neighborhoods struggle."

Race happens to be correlated with economics, and they're worried about the effects this might have on minorities, but the policy itself is race-neutral, and obviously so. Hell, even the policy under attack is based on economics, not race:

"And in 2000, they shifted from racial to economic integration, adopting a goal that no school should have more than 40 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, the proxy for poverty."

And again, while overturning the old policy may or may not be a good thing, you seem to be ignoring the actual reasons given for the change, such as the high rate of assigned transfers between schools, which can be quite disruptive for kids, or the fact that the old policy is still failing poor kids.

But hey, the racism charge is much easier to play than figuring out whether or not your policy preference actually works better.

You keep attributing to me attitudes and opinions that I have not expressed. I made no mention of racism in my posts.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It is if either economics or "finding a truly qualified buyer for a home in this neighborhood"* controls where people/neighborhoods happen to be and all the persons of color "happen"** to be in an area we happen to have just enough money to build a school building and put a few supplies in.


*a person of the trusted lighter skin tones who speaks English well

**coincidentally because they can't seem to be able to locate or fund housing in areas where lighter skinned good speakers of English just randomly seem to be located.

When I lived in a different house a couple decades ago, I rented the lower apartment to an integrated couple. The husband was black, he was a local fire fighter, his wife was white and their son was my son's age. They were wonderful people and I still see the man at least once a year because I do work for the fire department and he's still there.

It was a white neighborhood. Another fire fighter working for the same department lived a couple doors down. After my renters moved, the husband told me his wife never felt comfortable in our neighborhood. The co-worker neighbor made it clear he didn't approve of a black man marrying a white woman. I was absolutely shocked. The white fire fighter was young and I couldn't believe he had such an attitude. But I don't doubt my renter. And I don't doubt the couple did get a different reception when they moved back to a mostly black neighborhood in Seattle. It had nothing to do with economics or being able to afford a house in a white neighborhood. The fire fighters here make good money and the coworker in the neighborhood had a similar income.

Integration is a long term event if it is going to happen at all. But every bit helps especially getting kids to mix before they establish divisions. I do understand if violence or drugs is the issue and that can happen in many schools. But this does not sound like that is the case here.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nope. I'm saying there's no evidence of racism in the linked article. And there isn't. Nor have you presented any.

You too are apparently ignoring the stated reasons for opposition to the old policy. How... convenient.

But you'll ignore that possibility and blame it all on racism, because hey, that's what you do.

And maybe instead of accusing people of bigotry without any evidence you could find some evidence.

Oh, who am I kidding.

I cited the reason the parents stated (the diversity goal) and the reason the district stated (changing populations) was the basis of the problem (frequent school assignment changes) in at least 2 different posts. So don't tell lies.


As for disguised racism, this is from the OP link:

Pledging to "say no to the social engineers!" it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation's most celebrated integration efforts. ...

...some members are embracing the provocative idea that concentrating poor children, who are usually minorities, in a few schools could have merits - logic that critics are blasting as a 21st-century case for segregation....

...The new school board has won applause from parents who blame the old policy - which sought to avoid high-poverty, racially isolated schools - for an array of problems in the district and who say that promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools.

"This is Raleigh in 2010, not Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s - my life is integrated," said John Tedesco, a new board member.

But critics accuse the new board of pursuing an ideological agenda aimed at nothing less than sounding the official death knell of government-sponsored integration in one of the last places to promote it. Without a diversity policy in place, they say, the county will inevitably slip into the pattern that defines most districts across the country, where schools in well-off neighborhoods are decent and those in poor, usually minority neighborhoods struggle.

The NAACP has filed a civil rights complaint arguing that 700 initial student transfers the new board approved have already increased racial segregation, violating laws that prohibit the use of federal funding for discriminatory purposes.

I'm sorry if you'd like a cleaner story, but the story clearly has to do with racial segregation, whether that is tangential or primary.

So stop telling lies.

 

[AvalonXQ]

It was a white neighborhood. Another fire fighter working for the same department lived a couple doors down. After my renters moved, the husband told me his wife never felt comfortable in our neighborhood. The co-worker neighbor made it clear he didn't approve of a black man marrying a white woman. I was absolutely shocked. The white fire fighter was young and I couldn't believe he had such an attitude. But I don't doubt my renter. And I don't doubt the couple did get a different reception when they moved back to a mostly black neighborhood in Seattle.

I would disagree with your prediction here -- in my own anecdotal experience, many American blacks are very hostile toward black men marrying white women. That's the real danger of being a mixed-race couple in the U.S. -- there are probably enough racists in both cultures to make feel unwelcome almost anywhere.

 

[BeAChooser]

Skeptic Ginger, why is the predominately democratic controlled public education system such an abysmal failure? What else can you call it when in our nation's capital (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=13458 ) "only 12% of 8th-graders ... snip ... scored at grade-level proficiency or better in reading in the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress tests that were administered in the District and all 50 states"? And "only 7% of the District's public-school 8th-graders scored grade-level proficiency or better in math"? What else can you call it when in our nation's capital (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/08/AR2009060803996.html ), the on-time graduation rate is below 50%? Even though DC schools are amongst the best funded in the nation spending more than $25,000 per pupil (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402921.html )? Why is the predominately democratic controlled public education system such an abysmal failure? Hmmmmmmmm?

 

[Ziggurat]

I cited the reason the parents stated (the diversity goal) and the reason the district stated (changing populations) was the basis of the problem (frequent school assignment changes) in at least 2 different posts. So don't tell lies.

And despite neither of those reasons having anything to do with race, you're still calling it racism.

As for disguised racism, this is from the OP link:I'm sorry if you'd like a cleaner story, but the story clearly has to do with racial segregation, whether that is tangential or primary.

Except I'm not claiming that there are no racial consequences. Nor are you merely claiming that there ARE racial consequences. You're explicitly stating that people are acting out of racist motives. And you have presented no evidence of that.