In Teabagistan Schools Will Be Segregated

[Alferd_Packer]

Wow... and they expect that when things get worse that will make people happy?! I don't see those clowns getting re-elected anytime soon if that's the case. Too bad they'll wreck some of the local school districts before getting the boot.

I see this as a reenactment of the Dover, PA case. This time, instead of trying to force ID in the science classes, they are going to try to undo Brown v. BOE.

The only people that are going to walk away happy from this will be the lawyers.

I think I get it, now. When a tea partier talks about fiscal responsibility, they are talking about retirement plans for lawyers.

 

[Magyar]

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?

But they are! Or rather this IS done through section 8 and section 40 (In MA at least, I don't know if this is a nationwide thing) where a certain percentage of housing in a city has to meet certain affordability standards.

 

[Galteeth]

I see this as a reenactment of the Dover, PA case. This time, instead of trying to force ID in the science classes, they are going to try to undo Brown v. BOE.

The only people that are going to walk away happy from this will be the lawyers.

I think I get it, now. When a tea partier talks about fiscal responsibility, they are talking about retirement plans for lawyers.

Do you really equate this with Brown vs. BOE?

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Is Teabagistan anywhere near Libertopia?

It's downstream from Galt's Gulch. Just downriver from the galt's gulch sewer outlet, where all the 'kool aid' flows out

 

[AvalonXQ]

Wow... and they expect that when things get worse that will make people happy?!

It's more like they expect that if the problem is made more obvious, it will force a solution.
They make a good point that, if you have a large population of at-risk kids that are performing very poorly in schools, evenly distributing them among your schools so that the statistical effects are diluted enough to make it look like everyone's doing fine is hiding the problem.
Mixing the poor kids and the rich kids may make the district's numbers come out okay, but it's not actually helping the poor kids, who are still failing. Returning kids to their neighborhood schools also puts the at-risk kids in one place where the problems common to that group can be dealt with.
What's important is the next step -- when you have a school with primarily poor kids, do you underfund it and move the good teachers elsewhere, or do you focus your resources and best teachers where they are needed?

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

It's more like they expect that if the problem is made more obvious, it will force a solution.
They make a good point that, if you have a large population of at-risk kids that are performing very poorly in schools, evenly distributing them among your schools so that the statistical effects are diluted enough to make it look like everyone's doing fine is hiding the problem.

The problem being this is not the case. A 67% graduation rate is still dismal regardless of dropouts being centralized in a few schools or evenly distributed. The integration system removes the existence of problem schools without hiding the existence of problem students.

Mixing the poor kids and the rich kids may make the district's numbers come out okay, but it's not actually helping the poor kids, who are still failing. Returning kids to their neighborhood schools also puts the at-risk kids in one place where the problems common to that group can be dealt with.

However the poorer students are doing better when mixed in with the richer kids. They benefit from better funding, by working with students who have parents with more time to assist, and the poorer students that could do well but were held back because an entire school program was designed for a lower baseline can go further in a mixed school.

What's important is the next step -- when you have a school with primarily poor kids, do you underfund it and move the good teachers elsewhere, or do you focus your resources and best teachers where they are needed?

Unfortunately the general reaction to an under performing school is to blame the staff and restrict resources. No Child Left Behind sound familiar? If only poor or only rich students have access to the best teachers then these teachers are under utilized. A great teacher is a boon to both rich and poor students. By having integrated school districts the teachers can be distributed in a way that all students have access to the best teachers, supplies and funds.

This is the basis for economic integration. When all students have equal access to all resources, including funding and teachers, the overall student population does better. There are still further problems. In this case each school does have programs to target under performing students. In a non-integrated district it is easy to end up a school that caters to under performers and a school that has difficulty dealing with under performers. Meaning that students matched the wrong school will suffer.

 

[Cayvmann]

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.

So, it doesn't cost more to travel further? Nice. ( parents who take their kids to school, also have to drive further ) And the overhead of figuring out who is going where and what percentage of poor, etc. is also Nil? Having worked in government, I will assure you it costs loads.

Where is the proof that artificially driven economic diversity has helped? If there is proof of that, then the amount saved would be offset.

My daughter goes to school in a county without this policy, and her school is diverse, ethically and so forth. The schools in this county outperform those of Wake counties, with the exception of the magnet schools.

 

[Skeptic]

The problem here is the "treason of the intellectuals". Once public school social studies education became a mish-mash of grievances where the one important lesson is how awful and racist America -- and in particular the founding fathers, those slave-owning white males -- is, and the only important criteria for education is not how well pupils read, write, or figure but how "diverse" they are and what their "self-esteem" is like, it comes as no surprise that people wish to create a school curriculum to oppose that.

The result, of course, is that the folks who want to reform the system, like the teabaggers, go to the other extreme and throw out the baby with the bathwater. But looking at the enormous increase in spending on education by the edubeurocrats over the last 50 years and comparing it with the pathetic results, it is well due for reform. I would start with capital punishment for anybody who works in education who so much as utters the word "self-esteem".

In this thread, too, look what gets people shocked -- SHOCKED!: a school curriculum where the "slave driving" and "indian killing" founding fathers are actually treated respectfully. What kind of evil reactionary nonsense is that? Off with their head! Down with the racists!

 

[Darat]

Wow I didn't know USA schools had dropped subjects like mathematics and science.

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

So, it doesn't cost more to travel further? Nice. ( parents who take their kids to school, also have to drive further ) And the overhead of figuring out who is going where and what percentage of poor, etc. is also Nil? Having worked in government, I will assure you it costs loads.

It is not that further transportation cost nothing, it is that it costs less than attempting to have equal access to all services when the need for such services are inequally distributed. For instance, having a remedial math program available for all students in a district will be significantly more expensive if the brunt of them exists in a few schools but there is only a handful in each of the other schools. One teacher serving three to five students is generally considered a waste if the same teacher could serve 15 without any drop in performance. If instead it is attempted to bus students from schools without the programs they need to schools that have them, then once again there is the transportation cost but without the benefit of equally distributed capabilities.

Where is the proof that artificially driven economic diversity has helped? If there is proof of that, then the amount saved would be offset.

Generally speaking, better performing students lead to better performance during their adult lives and poorer performing students lead to adults that are a bigger drain on not only social programs but provide much less into the economy. The cost benefit is not necessarily just within the school finances. Though economically integrated school do generally provide better results at the same costs through distribution of needs and equal access to resources as provide in the above block.

It is important to note that the large expense of transportation lies in the initial need. Adding miles to transportation is a minor cost to a certain extent. If an entire state attempted to integrate students from cities hundreds of miles apart that obviously outweighs the initial costs. Within cities and counties the increase in transportation costs is often small.

My daughter goes to school in a county without this policy, and her school is diverse, ethically and so forth. The schools in this county outperform those of Wake counties, with the exception of the magnet schools.

Sounds like your school district naturally achieves the integration that other districts are attempting where it does not naturally occur. Though it is possible if you integrated with Wake county the overall performance of the combined area might do better. It really depends on a large number of factors.

 

[Cayvmann]

I wouldn't know. I'm not black. I've not had the same experience. I can only say it shocked me that in this day and age on the West coast someone my age would have the kind of bias my fire fighter neighbor had against his coworker, my tenant. And I know my tenants moved to a neighborhood they felt more comfortable in. And they've been in that neighborhood about 18 years now.

It wasn't economics that influenced what neighborhood they chose to live in.

I am glad for you, that you find this shocking. It might be proof that we are getting somewhere. I'm fighting my upbringing, to a certain extent, to be happy for my daughter having so many ethnic friends, and that they all seem to get along with everybody else. Unfortunately, I live and work with people who are less socially progressive about such things. It gives me headaches. We do have a ways to go, to get to MLK's dream.

By the way, if it can be proven that busing helps, then I'm all for it. I haven't read the Economist article yet, but I'm getting around to it.

 

[LTC8K6]

I'd just like to point out that these board members ran for election on this platform with the school system, and the people voted them in. The problems of schooling in the area are a long story. Students were being switched between schools on a yearly basis. Many folks just wanted the musical schools to end. They did not know what school their child would be sent to from year to year. It was a strange system, imo. Had to be pretty frustrating for a lot of parents in the school district.

From wiki, a good little synopsis:

The district since has become notable for its integration efforts. Schools in the system are today integrated based on the income levels reported by families on applications for federally subsidized school lunches, with the goal of having a maximum ratio of 40% low-income students at any one school. Consequently, thousands of suburban students are bused to magnet schools in poorer areas—and likewise, low-income students to suburban schools—to help maintain this income balance. The county's residents are divided in their support for the system's integration program due, partially, to some of the means of achieving that integration, such as long bus rides for many students and a lack of neighborhood schools. Despite improved integration, test results among poorer students continue to lag: for the 2007-2008 school year, only 18% of the district's schools met the adequate yearly progress goals of the No Child Left Behind Act[3], with only 71 percent passing state standardized tests.[4] Due to the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race in assigning students, Wake has been cited as a model for how other school systems can still maintain diversity in enrollment.[5] But the election in October 2009 of new school board members who back neighborhood schools could move the school district away from its diversity policy.[6]

In the effort to maintain economic diversity and keep up with rapid growth in its student population, Wake routinely reassigns thousands of students each year to different schools.[7] Many parents object to this annual shuffle. For the 2008-09 school year, for example, the school district has stated that it will reassign some 6,464 students in order to affect a new system-wide policy designed to help schools in the same geographic area achieve similar economic demographics. This wave of changes will require the reassignment of many low-income students to schools that have greater proportion of higher-income students.[8] In February 2009, the school board approved a plan that would move 24,654 students to different schools over the next three years.[9] But the school system is expected to abandon its diversity policy following the election of new school board members in 2009 who will move Wake toward neighborhood schools.[10]

 

[Cayvmann]

It's more like they expect that if the problem is made more obvious, it will force a solution.
They make a good point that, if you have a large population of at-risk kids that are performing very poorly in schools, evenly distributing them among your schools so that the statistical effects are diluted enough to make it look like everyone's doing fine is hiding the problem.
Mixing the poor kids and the rich kids may make the district's numbers come out okay, but it's not actually helping the poor kids, who are still failing. Returning kids to their neighborhood schools also puts the at-risk kids in one place where the problems common to that group can be dealt with.
What's important is the next step -- when you have a school with primarily poor kids, do you underfund it and move the good teachers elsewhere, or do you focus your resources and best teachers where they are needed?

This is kind of where my mind is. Are there statistics/studies that show that the people from the poorer neighborhoods are indeed doing better, that are not based on the overall numbers from the schools? If it is so, that poorer kids are actually doing better, then I'm all for it. The statistics should only cover the people who this policy is being put into place to help. If the policy doesn't help the people it intended to help, then you are putting a lot of people through stress that they don't need.

It has been my experience that no matter how many poor kids you throw into a school ( I was one ), the rich kids will never hang out with them, and their parents also do not help the other kids to study. I was lucky that, even though I was poor, my parents did spend time with me academically. I knew other kids whose parents both had to work too much and had no time for them. With few exceptions, they did poorly.

 

[TraneWreck]

They make a good point that, if you have a large population of at-risk kids that are performing very poorly in schools, evenly distributing them among your schools so that the statistical effects are diluted enough to make it look like everyone's doing fine is hiding the problem.

By pointing this out, aren't they, in fact, showing the problem?

I'm not sure why a massive social experiment to put all the worst students in a couple of schools is necessary when they've just explained the same problem this stunt is supposed to highlight.

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

The problem here is the "treason of the intellectuals". Once public school social studies education became a mish-mash of grievances where the one important lesson is how awful and racist America -- and in particular the founding fathers, those slave-owning white males -- is, and the only important criteria for education is not how well pupils read, write, or figure but how "diverse" they are and what their "self-esteem" is like, it comes as no surprise that people wish to create a school curriculum to oppose that.

I was in public schools until the year 2000. That was not my experience. History, language, math, reading, science and writing were still the most important aspects of education and tended to be equally weighted between each. Self esteem and diversity education was mostly tangential to the main curriculum. Most of the education based on emotional needs took place in the context of health and physical education classes. Some time was placed into assemblies of various sorts but happened less often than assemblies to promote the school's sporting events.

The result, of course, is that the folks who want to reform the system, like the teabaggers, go to the other extreme and throw out the baby with the bathwater. But looking at the enormous increase in spending on education by the edubeurocrats over the last 50 years and comparing it with the pathetic results, it is well due for reform. I would start with capital punishment for anybody who works in education who so much as utters the word "self-esteem".

You might be interested to see the statistics.

Here is the national education spending (including state and local) since 1870 as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...503_776&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s&show=

Then here is the national graduation rate since 1870.

http://www.edweek.org/media/34gradrate-c1.pdf

It is interesting to see that low spending levels during WWII resulted in almost flat growth of the graduation rate. Following that a spike in spending coincides with a spike in graduation rate. Then a return to 30s era spending results in slowed yet still increasing graduation rate. Spending increases correlate with a faster increasing graduation rate until 1970, where the highest historical spending still nets a decrease in gradution rates. Then in the early 80s spending drastically decreases to previous levels as graduation rates continue to follow. There was a spending spike from 2002 to 2005 followed by returned lower levels. Another spending spike happens in 2010 and projections show a decline in spending. Meanwhile graduation rates continue to steadily decline. I think a good idea would be to look at what factors existed in the late 1960s that lead to such an increase in graduation rates. Spending appears to be a factor but not the determining factor.

I speculate that wealth inequality helps play into this. Even though most years median wealth has increeased in the US, it has been flat to slow growth since the early 70s even as per capita wealth has drastically increased. Even as education spending has increased in the last 50 years the relative wealth of the bottom 60 percent has generally decreased in proportion of the total US wealth. If the strongest factor found for student succes is income class the dropping graduation rates do correlate, though not equally, with increasing income disparities. I know that correlation is not causation, but it is a place to look into when increasing and decreasing spending both appear to result in lowered graduation rates.

In this thread, too, look what gets people shocked -- SHOCKED!: a school curriculum where the "slave driving" and "indian killing" founding fathers are actually treated respectfully. What kind of evil reactionary nonsense is that? Off with their head! Down with the racists!

[sarcasm]Exactly, how dare people examine our past as having both noble and ignoble elements. Obviously people are incapable of understanding that our ancestors managed to both contribute positively while continuing to engage in practices we find reprehensible. Doing so might confuse people into thinking history has shown progress and incremental increases in rights and egaltarianism instead of the obvious perfection of late 18th Century that we have lost.[/sarcasm]

 

[WildCat]

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.

They did that here too. Unfortunately, what was happening was the people who bought them were living in those low-cost units for a few months and then selling them at full-cost and pocketing the difference.

You can't legislate real estate prices. Any attempt to do so will fail.

 

[WildCat]

However the poorer students are doing better when mixed in with the richer kids. They benefit from better funding

How would the funding be any different? These are schools in the same district, the funding all comes from the same pool.

Unless kids are being bussed from one district to another district, the funding is the same. And if you're taking kids from a poor district and bussing them to a rich one, then there's serious ethical issues involved. Who gets to pick which poor children will get to go to the rich school? Who picks which rich kid has to go to an underfunded poor school?

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

This is kind of where my mind is. Are there statistics/studies that show that the people from the poorer neighborhoods are indeed doing better, that are not based on the overall numbers from the schools? If it is so, that poorer kids are actually doing better, then I'm all for it. The statistics should only cover the people who this policy is being put into place to help. If the policy doesn't help the people it intended to help, then you are putting a lot of people through stress that they don't need.

I have not heard of any studies that show decreased performance of the impovershed in economically integrated schools, only studies that show increased performance. Some links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101407577.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/education/25raleigh.html (hey look, Wake county!)

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027858,00.html Here is a dissenting opinion that concedes that economic integration works but is impractical for most school districts to achieve.

It has been my experience that no matter how many poor kids you throw into a school ( I was one ), the rich kids will never hang out with them, and their parents also do not help the other kids to study. I was lucky that, even though I was poor, my parents did spend time with me academically. I knew other kids whose parents both had to work too much and had no time for them. With few exceptions, they did poorly.

Your experience is different than mine. It varies by area and by age. Up through 9th grade I mostly had friends from upper middle class families despite coming from a poor to working class family. In tenth grade I began to have more impovershed friends but was never soundly rejected by affluent students. My experiences were in California, Oregon, Nevada (briefly), and Washington State. By and large social cliques appeared to be formed by interest rather than background when children were left to decide for themselves. As an adult my friendships are primarily among working class individuals who I meet through work. That has not prevented me from forming a long term relationship with a woman from a top 5% family with the likelihood of herself being in the top 5%.

 

[WildCat]

btw, anyone here remember the Derrion Albert beating death in Chicago last year? A major factor in that was that the school serving one large housing project was closed and the students transferred to another high school in a better-off (but still 100% black) neighborhood, the Albert death was the culmination of a rivalry between the kids from the projects and the kids from the neighborhood the school was in.

Chicago, btw, spends tens of millions per year "desegregating" a school system that is 94% minority. We spend over $13,000 per student per year, and have a graduation rate of 52% or so. Whatever we're doing, we're doing it wrong.

I guess the real metric for the Raleigh schools is whether or not the children are benefitting academically, and it doesn't appear that they are:

While most students posted gains in state reading and math tests last year - more than three-quarters passed - the stubborn achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has persisted, though it has narrowed by some measures. And many parents see benefits beyond test scores.

"I want these kids to be culturally diverse," said Clarence McClain, who is African American and the guardian of a niece and nephew who are doing well in county schools. "If they're with kids who are all the same way, to break out of that is impossible. You've got to step outside your little world."

So it appears that education isn't the point, rather being "culturally diverse" is? Shouldn't education be the primary goal of a school?

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

How would the funding be any different? These are schools in the same district, the funding all comes from the same pool.

Unless kids are being bussed from one district to another district, the funding is the same. And if you're taking jids from a poor district and bussing them to a rich one, then there's seriopus ethical issues involved. Who gets to pick which poor children will get to go to the rich school? Who picks which rich kid has to go to an underfunded poor school?

I should have also been more clear and specified that schools with unequal funding needs as well as unequal funding.

Wealthier families tend to financially support schools in ways other than taxes. This generally goes to the specific schools where their children attend rather than just the state school system in general. If wealthy families are distributed across all schools then all schools are likely to benefit from the beyond tax revenues. Sports, music and the arts are the programs that tend to directly benefit from this. Doing so helps ease the burden of these programs from general funds, leading to greater spending on academics.

Secondly, higher poverty schools divide their funding along different lines. A school that has to spend a higher proportion on lunches, transportation, equipment and so on is spending less proportion on academics. Even when two schools have equal budgets of say $9k per student, when one has to spend more on safety and discipline there is an equal expenditure on academics.

Such an example would be the rural/urban divide. Due to economies of scale rural schools often cannot equal an urban school with equal per student funding. An answer to this is sometimes increasing transportation time, busing rural students from multiple counties into a centralized school location to share in costs. Depending on the local factors it might be more cost and funding effecient to send such students to the nearest urban school district but sometimes the urban districts do not like the idea of sharing costs in that way.

In one of the smaller towns I lived in it was discovered I belonged to a different elementary school in the district that served the rural areas outside of town. The school I was informed I would have to attend had a student body a third the size of the other schools in the district and generally had worse performance. The school spent a higher proportion of its funding on elements such as the building, equipment, and transportation and less on teachers. Luckily the district allowed students to attend any school district as long as you did not use the school's transportation and I was able to walk to school, which was about the same distance as it was to walk to the bus stop I would have taken to the rural school. About a decade later it was discovered it was immensely cheaper to bus the students to the town based schools instead of maintaining a rural, under performing school and it was shut down. To much protest as well.

Lastly, keep in mind that economic integration generally includes integrating multiple school districts. If a city's districts are divided into zones of wealth, that creates vastly unequal funding levels. Integrated systems generally attempt to end this by integrating the districts of an entire city or metropolitan area.