Trading Places: A North/South Reversal on Civil Rights

[lovesMountains]

Originally Posted by arbyunc

It's up to the school system to provide equal educational opportunities for all. If you use the "closest" school model, then Cary, North Raleigh, and a few other places will have schools with a large percentage of kids from better financial backgrounds, while other schools will have a large percentage of poorer kids. The richer schools will likely have better parental support, and they'll be more successful at raising money for things like lab equipment, band instruments, athletic facilities, etc. If you're the school superintendent charged with providing equal opportunities, you want to spread that wealth so everyone benefits equally.

How do you overcome the disparity problem and still allow neighborhood schools?

AH...see, there's your problem. You are under the mistaken impression that it's up to SCHOOLS to solve the social ills that have been with us since Biblical times

News flash - the job of schools is to EDUCATE. Parents are supposed to teach the social/survival skills that allow one to get along in the world.

Schools need to get back to the business of preparing students for college and vocations rather than trying to make the world "fair". (which, again another news flash for you, it is NEVER going to be).

[arbyunc]

Originally Posted by lovesMountains

AH...see, there's your problem. You are under the mistaken impression that it's up to SCHOOLS to solve the social ills that have been with us since Biblical times

News flash - the job of schools is to EDUCATE. Parents are supposed to teach the social/survival skills that allow one to get along in the world.

Schools need to get back to the business of preparing students for college and vocations rather than trying to make the world "fair". (which, again another news flash for you, it is NEVER going to be).

I didn't say anything about solving social ills. I said "equal educational opportunities", as in the Equal Educational Opportunity Act which prohibits states from denying equal educational opportunities on the basis of race, national origin, etc. Maybe that's a pipe dream, but it is the law. If a neighborhood schools plan results in racial inbalance, there's a risk of being in violation.

I'm not saying neighborhood schools can't work or that we shouldn't have them. Nor am I suggesting that kids should be bused around for miles and miles. We have neighborhood schools here in Forsyth County, along with a number of magnet schools and other programs that help shuffle things a bit. But the result is that some schools definitely have racial/economic inbalances. They've tried to address that by putting some of the more desirable magnet programs at the less desirable schools. And perhaps they help even things out with budgets; I don't know. I suppose it works okay, but I don't know that all schools provide equal educational opportunities.

[macjr82]

Originally Posted by Waterboy526

Since when is it up to the school system to devide children by economics or race? 99.9% of the school systems in this country have children attending the closest school to their house (baring overcrowding issues).

School systems need to know thier place and stop trying to play politics with our children. If I move to a certain place and they tell me my child can't go to the closest school (again baring overcrowding) then you better believe I'd be pulling him from county schools and placing him in a private school ASAP. I'm still not sure yet where my son will go to school. It all depends on what the Wake County School System looks like in 3-4 years.

The schools role is to educate kids in the best way possible, in this regard I think the proof is in the pudding. Wake county has (or had before this controversy) a reputation as one of the best, if not the best, school district in NC. I don't see how changing the policy will improve anything.

[box_of_zip_disks]

Originally Posted by lovesMountains

We went thru this struggle in Charlotte.

It had NOTHING to do with race here and I highly doubt it has anything to do with race there. .

I hate to reply to a post from ages ago, but William Cappachione, the guy who sued to overturn Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg, was a member of the John Birch Society and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and his case hinged around his claiming his daughter being twice denied enrollment in a magnet school despite using a lottery system because she was white. And the federal judge who heard the case, Robert Potter, was an anti-busing activist in the 1970s. There's no way what happened in Charlotte wasn't about race.

[davidals]

Originally Posted by box_of_zip_disks

I hate to reply to a post from ages ago, but William Cappachione, the guy who sued to overturn Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg, was a member of the John Birch Society and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and his case hinged around his claiming his daughter being twice denied enrollment in a magnet school despite using a lottery system because she was white. And the federal judge who heard the case, Robert Potter, was an anti-busing activist in the 1970s. There's no way what happened in Charlotte wasn't about race.

Absolutely.

I grew up in Charlotte in the 1970s. My elementary school endured regular bomb threats. We'd all get marched out of the vicinity while the fire department searched the building. It was so regular we didn't ever freak out over it, after a while at least.

The policy in Charlotte ended in a perfect premonition of what would happen in Raleigh ten years later - in Charlotte it was courts, not an election, but in both instances it was instigated from transplants with no memory of separate-but-equal, bomb threats, or any of the other crap people here worked very hard to end - so that all children get equal opportunities, not just the children of upper-middle-class helicopter parents stuck up some nondescript cul-de-sac somewhere. And it worked both ways - it was a real eye-opener for kids of well-heeled backgrounds to go to school with (and sometimes befriend) kids from less fortunate backgrounds - this is why a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds look upon the recent changes with nothing but fear and loathing. It's not any left-right ideology (and really - putting ideology over people is an anti-human thing to go around doing anyway) - rather it is based upon the experiences that people lived through, endured. That experience has been disrespected, devalued, and deemed worthless.

The South has come a long way. When I was a kid, my neighbor - two doors down - was one of the initiators of the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro. A lot of folks here and elsewhere in the South worked very, very hard to move this part of the country out of the stone age; I know some of them. So having some transplant from a swatch of uber-segregated suburban California or Michigan pop in, call a lawyer or three, and instantly embark on a mission to re-create the enclaves of self-segregation that suburban Detroit (as an example) might numb you with is inflammatory behavior.

Fairness: No. The world isn't fair. However, human beings evolve, change, and learn - in particular from the nastiness of history. The sooner that kids learn this, the better. Helicopter parents can't hover over them forever, and the world is a diverse place.

Social Engineering: A meaningless, logic-defiant term engineered primarily to clamp down on reasoned discourse. If it was invented by humans, and attempts to manage behavior, it's social engineering. Traffic lights? Stop signs? The admonition that getting blind drunk before taking the Chevy for a spin could get you killed or arrested? Howzabout washing hands after going to the bathroom? They're all social engineering. The alternative is Lord Of The Flies, or Somalia.