Advice re: sending children to public schools in the Central Northside

[Lobick]

Originally Posted by robrobrob

One point that hasn't been brought up is that a lot of times most suburban schools and neighborhood, as opposed to magent, city schools tend to be fairly close to your house which makes the time spent on a bus minimal. On the other hand, a city magnet school could be some distance away from your house which may make the bus ride much longer.

That is undoubtedly true and I suspect private schools may suffer from the same issue. I'm suspect as to whether that becomes a determining factor for neighborhood or school choice, but I suppose that it could play a role for some. FWIW, My own HS bus was a 45 minute route each way but I'm not sure my parents cared too much.

[steindle]

I had a really long bus ride (Mt. Oliver to Homewood -- 45-50 minutes usually) and extra long day (I think the days are one or 1 1/2 hrs longer at CAPA vs. other schools), in addition to a 15-minute walk to or from the bus stop. It's never even occurred to me that this had any negative effect on me. If anything, I'm a much more patient and introspective person for it.

[Q-tip motha]

Originally Posted by HeavenWood

So you react to negative stereotyping by throwing around your own negative stereotypes? How constructive and non-hypocritical.

The rep's blew up over that comment. You tell me who's stereotyping.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by Q-tip motha

The rep's blew up over that comment. You tell me who's stereotyping.

Both of you. Your snipe at Hampton was equally prejudiced/unnecessary. But I'm glad you can manage to find so much self-validation through your city-data rep points.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I dealt with this a bit in my edit. But to elaborate for one second:

Generally, there are three major reasons given among the "human biodiversity" (read, modern scientific racist) crowd for low IQs among blacks. They are.

Seasonal winter climates required us to think more about how we would get our next meal: This is silly on a few counts - parts of Africa are highly seasonal, after all, with dry seasons and, in some places, distinct winters with snow. Also, someplace like Papua New Guinea has natives whose ancestors never left the tropics, but their IQs are probably no lower than average when the Flynn Effect and underdevelopment is taken into account.

There was some novel mutation when humans went "out of Africa" which boosted our intelligence: The problem here is there was a back migration into Africa, especially West Africa (many Ethiopians are around half "white" for example). If high IQs were a selective advantage in Eurasia, they would have been in Africa as well, and spread far. At minimum, you should see a cline in IQ, with Ethiopia in the middle, but it is as depressed as its neighbors, suggesting low-development causes low African IQ scores.

"Civilization" boosted IQ: Silly for the same reasons above - parts of Africa (Sudan and Ethiopia in particular) were civilized back when most of northern Europe was still tribal. To argue that this doesn't count is special pleading.



As I said, I am open to there being natural variation in intelligence among different ethnic groups. Current IQ scores suggest one standard deviation between black and white test scores (around 15 points). However, British test scores recently showed a total elimination of the test score gap between white students and the children of African immigrants. I think it's possible there's some (on the order of 5%) natural variation, but I think most of the gap in the U.S. context is due to the stereotype threat and greater exposure to environmental contaminants. Perhaps I'm just telling myself this because, like most people in the U.S., belief in equality is a central dogma, and it's as hard for me to think otherwise as it would be someone in the middle ages to doubt God. Still, I see no reason to change my belief structure with the data at hand.

There is something I want to input here. Race and IQ are often presented in a general way. One thing that is not considered is the individual side of this. It is easy to look at this from a generalized perspective. However, one has to ask about the individuals themselves who took the test. One size doesn't fit all, that goes for everyone, Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, etc. One of the most important statistics is the statistic that the individual is working with. There are studies that will say that the IQ difference between Blacks and Whites are one standard deviation apart, with Blacks being on the lower end. One person could say "Blacks in general are not that smart" if that person looked at the statistic from a general perspective. However, looking at it from an individualistic perspective, you have to look behind the statistics. This particular statistic could say one thing. However, what if a Black person looking at this has an IQ of 110 or higher, or if this person is a professional with a college degree? Saying "the Black race isn't that intelligent" will paint all Black people with a broad stroke, especially those who are the very opposite of what is being said. This is why I say this has to be looked at on an individual level. If you look at individuals, there are a variety of factors.

[Archangelesk]

Hello, I am the original poster. Just wanted to report back in. This thread was helpful because I considered the fact that my decision does not need to be made immediately. I can try to navigate the public schools first, attempt to get into magent programs and decide if they work for our family. My oldest son is now in public preschool, and he is thriving. His teachers are very, very talented. So, we will continue to see how it goes.

[Lobick]

Originally Posted by Archangelesk

Hello, I am the original poster. Just wanted to report back in. This thread was helpful because I considered the fact that my decision does not need to be made immediately. I can try to navigate the public schools first, attempt to get into magent programs and decide if they work for our family. My oldest son is now in public preschool, and he is thriving. His teachers are very, very talented. So, we will continue to see how it goes.

Great news..thanks for the update.

[Goodjules]

Originally Posted by Archangelesk

Hello, I am the original poster. Just wanted to report back in. This thread was helpful because I considered the fact that my decision does not need to be made immediately. I can try to navigate the public schools first, attempt to get into magent programs and decide if they work for our family. My oldest son is now in public preschool, and he is thriving. His teachers are very, very talented. So, we will continue to see how it goes.

Thanks for the follow-up. Glad to hear that public schools are working for your family. Just curious, are you in your neighborhood school? With the exception of my son's last two year's of high school when he went to a private school (it was racially, ethnically, and economically diverse, but not nearly as much as the public schools he had attended up to that point), both my kids went to racially, ethnically, and economically diverse public schools and did just fine. I did make sure to get them in to good public schools (not always in our neighborhood) which isn't always an option in some places.

[Archangelesk]

Because he is on an IEP, he was sent to a school a few miles away. But, he will probably transition to one of the 3 preschools in or near our neighborhood next year. So, although my current experience has been nothing but positive, I have not yet experienced the neighborhood school. His current classroom is racially and economically diverse. At the neighborhood school, it skews towards less balanced diversity, as I suspect he will be a racial and economic class minority. I don't know that this is a bad thing, but it will be different. Currently, more than half his class has some sort of developmental delay and his delays look to be trending such that he will be classified as not delayed sometime next year. So, he will experience a different type of diversity in a different school where his peers are typically developing (I am using vocabulary from the IEP).

[Goodjules]

Originally Posted by Archangelesk

Because he is on an IEP, he was sent to a school a few miles away. But, he will probably transition to one of the 3 preschools in or near our neighborhood next year. So, although my current experience has been nothing but positive, I have not yet experienced the neighborhood school. His current classroom is racially and economically diverse. At the neighborhood school, it skews towards less balanced diversity, as I suspect he will be a racial and economic class minority. I don't know that this is a bad thing, but it will be different. Currently, more than half his class has some sort of developmental delay and his delays look to be trending such that he will be classified as not delayed sometime next year. So, he will experience a different type of diversity in a different school where his peers are typically developing (I am using vocabulary from the IEP).

Good luck. It sounds like you are making excellent choices for your child.

My son was the only non-Hispanic white kid in his small middle school and did fine. He did have some problems, but nothing that wasn't manageable. When he first went to a big public high school he was dismayed when at lunch most of the white and Asian kids self-segregated to one lawn and most of the Hispanic, black and Pacific Islander kids self segregated to another lawn. He was the only white kid in the latter group because that's where all his friends from middle school were. We eventually moved him to a private school where the diverse student body was more cohesive.