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The schools are not doing it to them and are thus not responsible. They are doing it to themselves. The schools did not make them this way. They made the schools that way. They, and only they, can stop it.
Never suggested that the schools were at fault as I don't believe that to be the case. What I am suggesting is that good educational opportunities are important but insufficient and that perhaps we should look at external resources. Like you said, you can't foist paradigm shift, but at the same time, targeted groups need to be able to see that there may be more available. Good schools are part of this and there's already a core (see tutoring, above) that is actively seeking better options. These kids generally come from single, female headed households but it seems like the more we offer, the more demand we have.
You can break it down any way you want, but in the end, society pays for dysfunction and dysfunction is not necessarily a predestination. Other urban school systems have made inroads... why shouldn't DC?
Never suggested that the schools were at fault as I don't believe that to be the case. What I am suggesting is that good educational opportunities are important but insufficient and that perhaps we should look at external resources. Like you said, you can't foist paradigm shift, but at the same time, targeted groups need to be able to see that there may be more available. Good schools are part of this and there's already a core (see tutoring, above) that is actively seeking better options. These kids generally come from single, female headed households but it seems like the more we offer, the more demand we have.
You can break it down any way you want, but in the end, society pays for dysfunction and dysfunction is not necessarily a predestination. Other urban school systems have made inroads... why shouldn't DC?
Maybe so. That is why I was all for school vouchers. I saw it for it was- a scholarship program for those who give a damn. And I have no problem with help for those that do- I myself have tutored kids from a charter school in Anacostia.
Nonetheless, all of that will not solve the greater problem. Only a paradigm shift (good choice of words btw) will and that must come from within. They have to want it.
Sure they are. They didn't ask to be born to teenagers or young women who have children by several men, all of whom are either substance abusers or imprisoned or both.
They didn't ask to be left in the care of 35 year old grandmothers and their "boyfriends," or left to raise themselves and their younger siblings in rat-infested apartments.
You're absolutely right that the problems in the DC schools will not be fixed without fixing the communities around them, but it's unfair to blame the kids for having the misfortune to have been born into such dysfunctional situations.
I think you all are missing the point that even the public schools in the rich areas in NW still suck, especially when compared to the suburban schools, and certainly when you look beyond the elementary school level. The kids who live in these neighborhoods have parents who are together enough to pay $600,000 - $1M+ to live there, hold professional jobs, etc. And the schools are crap. Regardless of what you think of the schools in the poor areas and the kids who go to them, the failure of the schools even in the best areas is clearly the fault of a dysfunctional school system, not of the kids.
The public elementary schools in the affluent areas have decent test scores so long as there are enough affluent children attending them. (These schools also include students from other parts of DC). Of course, that has nothing to do with the school system, and everything to do with the socioeconomic background of the students and the intense involvement of their parents.
OK, but the elementary schools still aren't as good as the suburban schools, and the middle schools and high schools completely stink.
Look, is everyone saying that some kids are teachable, and some kids are completely unteachable, and the teachable kids will just learn things automatically even in the worst school environment and the unteachable kids will never learn anything in any environment you could ever possibly put them in? So it doesn't matter how well or poorly DC runs its public schools because the school environment just plain doesn't matter? Does that sum it up?
Look, my dad grew up in a boxcar dragged off its rails in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, without plumbing. My mom grew up in a rotting shotgun shack in New Orleans where every window was missing or broken, and the kitchen was so infested with roaches that they just boarded it up and never used it. My mother was a drunk, and my dad beat me. Yet I got myself into Jefferson Science and Tech high school, went to college, and have two advanced degrees. If socioeconomic background was destiny, I'd be sitting in a trailer right now. But I'm not. I'm just not buying the "poor kids are unteachable" story. School environment matters.
School environment matters, but the home environment matters far more. Children from middle-class, intact families tend to do fine in school; children being raised by young single mothers in poor urban or rural neighborhoods tend to do miserably in school.
Some of the elementary schools are OK because they have a critical core of children from yuppie families. The middle and high schools in DC stink because there are virtually no middle or upper middle class children from intact families in those schools.
Fairfax and Montgomery counties offer essentially the same curriculum, teachers, resources, etc. in all of their schools, yet the test scores consistently reflect the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students.
I think you all are missing the point that even the public schools in the rich areas in NW still suck, especially when compared to the suburban schools, and certainly when you look beyond the elementary school level. The kids who live in these neighborhoods have parents who are together enough to pay $600,000 - $1M+ to live there, hold professional jobs, etc. And the schools are crap. Regardless of what you think of the schools in the poor areas and the kids who go to them, the failure of the schools even in the best areas is clearly the fault of a dysfunctional school system, not of the kids.
Well of course! Where do you think I went to school? You are preaching to the choir.
However, when I resided in Upper NW in the 1970s, it was more middle class. Remember, that was right after the 1968 riots. I cannot afford to live there now, even if I was willing to send my son to my alma maters, which I am not.
And the schools went down because the people you are describing fled the system and were mostly replaced by the people I am describing. Thus, the schools in Upper NW do not so much serve that community save for a few intrepid souls (ME!!!!). It serves communities across town. And once again...Schools are a function of the community they serve.
Sure, had my JHS and SHS resembled my elementary school and been composed of kids exclusively from that area, it would be as you describe. But it wasn't. The residents of Upper NW are a minority. And only a minority of a minority utilizes the local schools.
School environment matters, but the home environment matters far more. Children from middle-class, intact families tend to do fine in school; children being raised by young single mothers in poor urban or rural neighborhoods tend to do miserably in school.
Some of the elementary schools are OK because they have a critical core of children from yuppie families. The middle and high schools in DC stink because there are virtually no middle or upper middle class children from intact families in those schools.
Fairfax and Montgomery counties offer essentially the same curriculum, teachers, resources, etc. in all of their schools, yet the test scores consistently reflect the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students.
You are absolutely correct. These kids are not stupid. Nor are they inferior in any way. But they have grown up in a dystopic culture that is ultimately self-destructive. Their culture needs to change and money is not going to accomplish that.
I think succeeding in school, regardless of a student's socioeconomic background or how poor the school is, all depends on the student. Is s/he one to be dictated by his/her environment, or one who will go against the grain and beat the odds? I think for every failure in school, there is a Cedric Jennings---grew up poor in a rough neighborhood of SE (single mother, two older sisters with different dads, living in poverty, drugs and crime everywhere), went to Ballou (one of the worst, if not the worst, schools in DC), but got accepted to Brown and graduated with a 3.3 average. Ron Suskind wrote a book about Cedric called "A Hope in the Unseen," which really dispels truths about kids who grow up in bad neighborhoods. Not all of them are hopeless cases.
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