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Local news station Spectrum News NY 1 has posted a video that shows white parents furiously attacking a plan to require all local middle schools to reserve 25 percent of their seats for students who score below grade level on state English and Math exams.
Reserving A QUARTER of the school for students who are REQUIRED to be substandard? That's an awful plan and should be scrapped. But of course, people will use this opportunity to lie and act as though it's EVIL WHITE PEOPLE HATE EVERYBODY.
Of course these low performing kids go to schools WITHIN the district and these are public schools. This isn't special schools like Brooklyn Tech or Bronx Sc. Just regular middle schools so I don't see how access can be restricted.
If the parents object then they can find a private school.
Lowering the bar, failing to address problems that are endemic to an area, school or whatever instead of moving kids about, and most of all failing to call things as they are; to wit holding.
Please understand that this is NOT about shifting kids from one school district to another. This is about what is happening WITHIN a school district. It is a PUBLIC school where all kids within a given school district should have access to, unless the school has restricted access. As far as I know NONE of these schools are in that category.
Here is something to think about. As neighborhoods gentrify as upper middle class more educated families move in they will encounter schools populated with poor kids, some from families where education is a lower priority. It seems as if bringing in 25% of these kids into a high performing school is better than attending a 90% low performing school. So will these affluent parents, moving to Harlem or Ft Greene insist that low performing kids be moved?
This is why people move to the suburbs as one will get this if one lives in a mixed income district.
Please understand that this is NOT about shifting kids from one school district to another. This is about what is happening WITHIN a school district. It is a PUBLIC school where all kids within a given school district should have access to, unless the school has restricted access. As far as I know NONE of these schools are in that category.
Here is something to think about. As neighborhoods gentrify as upper middle class more educated families move in they will encounter schools populated with poor kids, some from families where education is a lower priority. It seems as if bringing in 25% of these kids into a high performing school is better than attending a 90% low performing school. So will these affluent parents, moving to Harlem or Ft Greene insist that low performing kids be moved?
This is why people move to the suburbs as one will get this if one lives in a mixed income district.
White parents in Harlem are *NOT* sending their kids to local schools. If you think people like Neil Patrick Harris and his husband would so do then think again. Their kids attend private schools and you can see them via limos, car services, and or trains/buses (for the older teens) make that exodus each morning and return later in day.
African American and those left largely also are abandoning public schools in Harlem and try to get their kids into one of the charter schools.
I personally would argue that it's racist to say that black and brown kids can't perform accordingly unless they are moved to a school that is majority white and Asian.
White parents in Harlem are *NOT* sending their kids to local schools. If you think people like Neil Patrick Harris and his husband would so do then think again. Their kids attend private schools and you can see them via limos, car services, and or trains/buses (for the older teens) make that exodus each morning and return later in day.
African American and those left largely also are abandoning public schools in Harlem and try to get their kids into one of the charter schools.
Well the parents who object to the type of kids attending PUBLIC schools WITHIN their district can do the same as NPH. Or they can attempt to get them into charters, or do what people have long done......move to the burbs.
They cannot control which kids enters a given school if they remain in their district, unless the schools SPECIFICALLY require an entrance exam as Stuyvesant does.
I suggest to these parents that 25% is being kind. Another chancellor might throw open the gauntlet and let everyone compete for every school, meaning that more than 25% low performers will likely attend. Plus more of their kids might be shifted to the lower performing schools.
NOT EVERYONE CAN GET INTO A CHARTER school, or a parochial school and you fool yourself if you think that 100% of the low income parents lack ambitions for their kids. Now I know that closet racists love to scream that African American and Latino parents are all drug addicts who don't give a damn for their kids. The realities are way more complex.
So yes some of these low income parents will fight to get their kids to better schools, given that the schools in their immediate neighborhoods are failing The UWS and UES parents might find more than 25%. They better take what they can get and work to ensure that these low performers get as much support as they need.
I personally would argue that it's racist to say that black and brown kids can't perform accordingly unless they are moved to a school that is majority white and Asian.
That may be so; yet in a way it is the basis of and what is behind the latest "inclusion" and "equality" push. This involves everything from those affordable housing lotteries to giving people various vouchers that allow (in theory) for them to live anywhere, not just segregated into low income areas.
Again, democrats/liberals/progressives learned the hard way and very fast after passing various civil rights laws in 1960's and 1970's; that Barry Goldwater was correct. Faced with an influx of African American and or others they didn't like whites largely fled urban areas for the suburbs. While the latter was and or is associated with good schools, beautiful homes, excellent healthcare and other great amenities; the former was left to rot and become crime filled ghettos.
BdeB and city council have come out on record as what drives their "inclusion" housing schemes. They want low income households (which usually but not always is code for minorities) to have the same access to all those "great amenities" as better off white households.
Barack Obama's administration was suing the pants off various areas of Westchester and Long Island because they weren't "inclusive". His HUD also hatched plans to bust the suburbs by going after local governments to force areas to build apartment/multi-family housing (which many parts of Westchester and Long Island like other similar areas prohibit by zoning codes), along with making Section 8 vouchers more easily useable in the suburbs.
I personally would argue that it's racist to say that black and brown kids can't perform accordingly unless they are moved to a school that is majority white and Asian.
It is a fact that a disproportionate % of kids of color come from homes where parents are less able to provide support to ensure that their kids are high performers.
It is also a fact that most of the middle class black and Latino households were squeezed out of Manhattan a while back. So that borough has the worst income inequality in the city. So many of these black and Latino kids come from some of the poorest families in the city.
It has been proven that kids whose parents are educated, receive way more support than those whose parents aren't. So all things being equal their cognitive skills are more developed, so they do better academically. In Manhattan class closely correlates to ethnicity.
Don't bring in the kids from poor Chinese families because while they might pass the tests (because they go to test cram schools) when you actually meet them sometimes they lack some of the basic social skills that black and Latino kids have. Skills important for success in life. Many of them also have poor writing skills and an inability to communicate. I don't blame them. They are who they are based on the limitations of the environment within which they were raised. Family AND school.
I know of a Chinese woman who hires them as interns and she has pointed out to me all of their flaws. Even though she is also an immigrant, being highly educated she has provided an environment for her kids that way exceeds what these poor kids get. It becomes a cruel shock for some when they begin to work and discover that life isn't merely about checking the right box. Having initiative and an ability to communicate is vital. She even has to train some of them about how to greet a client when they enter the office. She had them practice with me, so that they didn't embarrass her, should one of her clients appear.
That may be so; yet in a way it is the basis of and what is behind the latest "inclusion" and "equality" push. .
As soon as you start with some diatribe about "liberals" you reveal yourself tp be who you are. Go take a pill to deal with your anger. The fact remains that poor people are around you and the more support that is provided to help them escape poverty, instead of wallowing in it the better off we will ALL be.
That is unless you think that building jails and funding welfare is a good use of your tax dollars.
As soon as you start with some diatribe about "liberals" you reveal yourself tp be who you are. Go take a pill to deal with your anger. The fact remains that poor people are around you and the more support that is provided to help them escape poverty, instead of wallowing in it the better off we will ALL be.
That is unless you think that building jails and funding welfare is a good use of your tax dollars.
Speaking of anger and so forth never said low income equaled jails and so forth; that is *YOU*.
But since *you* brought up the matter.......
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