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The decision of where one's children will go to school ranks with where one will live as one of the most important decisions a typical family makes. In fact, the two are often intertwined: parents who love the city neighborhood they live in will pull up stakes and relocate to a suburb when their kids reach school age.
They move because they believe their kids will get a better education in one of those suburban districts than they will in their local public school.
But will they?
I've met several parents who didn't pull up stakes, and they've told me that their kids are getting great educations in neighborhood public schools that the rating sites like GreatSchools.org and even the School District of Philadelphia's own progress reports don't rate highly.
I've combined what I've learned from those parents with the story of my own education to produce the cover feature in this month's annual Schools Issue of Philadelphia magazine:
One of the things I learned, and this really shouldn't be news to anyone: What goes on outside the school is a bigger determinant of how much and how well kids learn than what goes on inside it. (Education scholar Lawrence Steinberg made this point rather forcefully in his 1997 book "Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do.")
One of the things I argue in this article is this: What (affluent white) parents need to do now is what my mother did with me: Deliberately and consciously put their kids in schools where their kids will be in the minority. The lessons they (and the parents) will learn about community and society there will be as important as the academic subjects they will study — and they'll do just fine on the academic subjects too, for they will have the parent support they would get no matter where they were enrolled.
I learned several valuable lessons that way. So will those readers. So, I maintain, will you and your kids if you're a parent who follows this path.
Counterarguments gladly accepted and engaged here. Supportive testimony also welcome.
You're not going to convince many people. Very different outlooks, very different levels of tolerance for certain types of environments and standards. The people who were "pleasantly surprised" are going to be very different from parents who'd never consider the schools in the first place.
I did use "very" too often but do remember when the choir is being preached to (cough, ahem, Mount Airy).
You're not going to convince many people. Very different outlooks, very different levels of tolerance for certain types of environments and standards. The people who were "pleasantly surprised" are going to be very different from parents who'd never consider the schools in the first place.
I did use "very" too often but do remember when the choir is being preached to (cough, ahem, Mount Airy).
I did also look at a school in Fairmount, which was the subject of a racially paranoid cover feature in our March 2013 issue — I mention it in the article, and that feature indirectly led to my freelancing for the mag starting that summer.* The one parent there was considering other options, but he heard the neighbors were giving it a look and decided to check it out himself.
But if I don't convince some of those people who would "never consider the schools in the first place," I won't have done my job. It only takes a few, and they will then do the convincing of others.
*And it was a huge flap over the cover photo in the September 2015 Schools Issue that directly led to my getting hired full-time there — I'm the first African-American member of the mag's full-time editorial staff. There's a certain coming-full-circle about doing this piece, for the editor-in-chief who hired me just retired yesterday — after assigning me this story I had pitched at story conferences on three separate occasions.
I totally agree with the importance ending implicit segregation at the K-12 level. I think it is a key way to improve race relations and build a more equitable society. I work at a school with a few of these "piloting" white families who are happy with their decision. I appreciate your efforts to help bridge this educational gap, and to end the stigma of urban public schools. When families get out of their comfort zone and purposefully send their kids to a school deemed "failing" by such reports, they play an important part in bridging this divide.
However, it will take more than piloting families to engender a domino integration effect. Regardless of how some schools are better than reports suggest, others are truly in need of intervention -- especially at the middle and high school level. These interventions need to be sustainable and work beyond the school to improve the lives of students whose home/street life is not conducive to success at school. We need to discontinue the tired-out (and wholly unsuccessful) approaches which penalizes students trapped in cyclical poverty and cyclical trauma. This cyclical poverty looks like failing unengaged students and suspending disruptive students, which leads to drop outs, which leads to failing schools and destitute dropouts. The cycle just continues.
For middle class and affluent families to "buy in" to these schools, we must advocate for social interventions which help end cyclical poverty and cyclical drop outs. It will take robust and courageous interventions at the school level and beyond (read: reduce class sizes, increase behavioral support and counselor staff, have specific anti-attrition staff who work to support struggling students beyond the class size, etc. *as well as* transform our economic model to engender a more humane and inclusive society) to end this multilayered cycle.
My point is that while I appreciate your efforts to illuminate some of the myths and racisms surrounding Philadelphia's public schools, many schools are still in dire need. It will take the efforts you describe, as well as concrete policy change, to undue social inequities and implicit segregation.
Last edited by Muinteoir; 09-05-2020 at 10:30 AM..
I totally agree with the importance ending implicit segregation at the K-12 level. I think it is a key way to improve race relations and build a more equitable society. I work at a school with a few of these "piloting" white families who are happy with their decision. I appreciate your efforts to help bridge this educational gap, and to end the stigma of urban public schools. When families get out of their comfort zone and purposefully send their kids to a school deemed "failing" by such reports, they play an important part in bridging this divide.
However, it will take more than piloting families to engender a domino integration effect. Regardless of how some schools are better than reports suggest, others are truly in need of intervention -- especially at the middle and high school level. These interventions need to be sustainable and work beyond the school to improve the lives of students whose home/street life is not conducive to success at school. We need to discontinue the tired-out (and wholly unsuccessful) approaches which penalizes students trapped in cyclical poverty and cyclical trauma. This cyclical poverty looks like failing unengaged students and suspending disruptive students, which leads to drop outs, which leads to failing schools and destitute dropouts. The cycle just continues.
For middle class and affluent families to "buy in" to these schools, we must advocate for social interventions which help end cyclical poverty and cyclical drop outs. It will take robust and courageous interventions at the school level and beyond (read: reduce class sizes, increase behavioral support and counselor staff, have specific anti-attrition staff who work to support struggling students beyond the class size, etc. *as well as* transform our economic model to engender a more humane and inclusive society) to end this multilayered cycle.
My point is that while I appreciate your efforts to illuminate some of the myths and racisms surrounding Philadelphia's public schools, many schools are still in dire need. It will take the efforts you describe, as well as concrete policy change, to undue social inequities and implicit segregation.
It has WAY more to do with the childrens' family lives (or lack-there-of) than the schools themselves.
It has WAY more to do with the childrens' family lives (or lack-there-of) than the schools themselves.
"Come back, Daniel Patrick Moynihan! All is forgiven!"
Two days ago, I plowed through an article that ran in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal in 2005 — the 40th anniversary of the release of Moynihan's (in)famous report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" — that argued that the wounded pride that produced the fierce backlash to the report had a deleterious effect on low-income Black communities in particular and Black America as a whole in general.
And while some of the fallout from that backlash — including the expanding of the circle of acceptable families to include same-sex couples — was IMO beneficial, there were indeed a number of deleterious effects, including the rendering superfluous of Black men in raising the children they fathered.
And those various efforts to re-engage Black men in low-income communities in that task acknowledges that damage implicitly, but it's kind of hard to unring a bell.
I don't have children but I've been reading the thread with interest, as my mother and dear friends were teachers. The most recent retired four years ago from teaching at Edison High because she just couldn't take the chaos in public school education anymore.
I have one brother who pulled his children from a brick and mortar Phila. public school and put them into cyber school almost a decade ago. Another sent his two to private school.
In general from birth until one's education ends, I believe in attending the best institution one can afford. Because, I've always thought the answer "what's best for the child?".....is whatever school gives the child/student the best exposure to the best teachers (education?), the best contacts/friends, the most knowledge, in the most supportive and conducive learning situation.
IF I had children, the answer to the thread's starter question would range from...."depends on the neighborhood and the school"........to heck no. More than likely: "heck no."
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As for the brother struggled IMMENSELY financially to send two children to private school for ALL grades first to 12th...... they live in Mt Airy where I thought schools were good. And maybe they are. So I did ask. And their mother insisted on private school. And I believe the people those children met, parents contacts they were exposed to, "quality of education they received" put them in better stead for their college years (and life) than attending a neighborhood public school....and that was in a "GOOD" neighborhood.
My grand nieces and nephews all are attending or did attend public school. Their English languages skills (grammar, diction) are HORRIBLE. I can only hope they're getting a "better education" than their speaking ability conveys.
In general I am definitely for being an education snob.....IF one can afford to be.
One co-worker who lives in RADNOR. RADNOR, mind you. Where I'd think public schools would be pretty good. She STILL went with a small Main Line private school for her only child. Of course the family has had legacy attendance there for three generations at least. One grandmother insisted, "Of course she's attending XYZ school...." I said to the co-worker, who/whom I didn't know well at all, you know you will have spent more than a half-million dollars just to get her through 12th grade?" She said, "Oh I know. But that's where we wanted her to go. We knew that was the best." And the coworker has already said, money will be no object in the girl's university options as well.
The coworker herself went to public school. But confided in me that her husband's family has money, that she was fortunate enough to marry into wealth, and that's how his family is. Only the best of everything.
I don't have children but I've been reading the thread with interest, as my mother and dear friends were teachers. The most recent retired four years ago from teaching at Edison High because she just couldn't take the chaos in public school education anymore.
I have one brother who pulled his children from a brick and mortar Phila. public school and put them into cyber school almost a decade ago. Another sent his two to private school.
In general from birth until one's education ends, I believe in attending the best institution one can afford. Because, I've always thought the answer "what's best for the child?".....is whatever school gives the child/student the best exposure to the best teachers (education?), the best contacts/friends, the most knowledge, in the most supportive and conducive learning situation.
IF I had children, the answer to the thread's starter question would range from...."depends on the neighborhood and the school"........to heck no. More than likely: "heck no."
---------
As for the brother struggled IMMENSELY financially to send two children to private school for ALL grades first to 12th...... they live in Mt Airy where I thought schools were good. And maybe they are. So I did ask. And their mother insisted on private school. And I believe the people those children met, parents contacts they were exposed to, "quality of education they received" put them in better stead for their college years (and life) than attending a neighborhood public school....and that was in a "GOOD" neighborhood.
My grand nieces and nephews all are attending or did attend public school. Their English languages skills (grammar, diction) are HORRIBLE. I can only hope they're getting a "better education" than their speaking ability conveys.
In general I am definitely for being an education snob.....IF one can afford to be.
One co-worker who lives in RADNOR. RADNOR, mind you. Where I'd think public schools would be pretty good. She STILL went with a small Main Line private school for her only child. Of course the family has had legacy attendance there for three generations at least. One grandmother insisted, "Of course she's attending XYZ school...." I said to the co-worker, who/whom I didn't know well at all, you know you will have spent more than a half-million dollars just to get her through 12th grade?" She said, "Oh I know. But that's where we wanted her to go. We knew that was the best." And the coworker has already said, money will be no object in the girl's university options as well.
The coworker herself went to public school. But confided in me that her husband's family has money, that she was fortunate enough to marry into wealth, and that's how his family is. Only the best of everything.
Not to quarrel with you, but you might want to read my article as well as the thread.
And yes, at the end, I address the question of where I get off telling people to consider their local public school when my Mom sure didn't. (She had me transferred out-of-district from my overcrowded neighborhood school to the smallest public school in the city, across town [on the white side of Troost], next to the university, when I was ready for kindergarten. Then, on the advice of a fifth-grade summer school teacher, she enrolled me in the city's top private school for boys when I entered 7th grade.)
One of the things I tackle in this article is the tendency for whites to not want to be in settings where they are in the minority.
And you might want to read the testimony of the white parents who are sending their kids to neighborhood public schools in Germantown*, Mount Airy and Fairmount in the story. Yes, these parents are in the minority both at the schools their kids attend and among parents generally. But if more join them, their local schools will get stronger — though I can't ignore the point Pennsport makes upthread about how factors "Beyond the Classroom" actually loom larger than school factors in explaining how much and how well students learn in school.
(This, by the way, leads to a conclusion that many will find confounding: The child of an affluent white family will likely do just as well in a school where most of the students are from low-income black households as they will at a school where most of the students share their background — IF: the school has a good teaching staff and few seriously disruptive students who eat up a disproportionate share of those teachers' attention.)
And keep in mind that you're talking with a committed integrationist here, thanks in no small part to my upbringing and education. It's my experience that as their kids grow and come of age, white families are only weakly committed to the same. I think our society would be better off if everyone were more strongly committed to that goal.
Ultimately, my advice is not to rely on the numerical rankings on GreatSchools or grades on Niche, but rather, visit the school. As I said in my original draft of the article, "After all, you don't buy a house sight unseen, do you?"
*The event that got me to thinking about all this took place two years ago around Eastertime, when two white parents with children in Anna Lingelbach Elementary, one of the schools mentioned in the article, double-teamed me after services at First Presbyterian Church in Germantown and told me what a great education their kids were getting there. I think both of their oldest children now attend Masterman, the top public high school in the state and one of the 50 best in the country according to U.S. News & World Report.
I don't have children but I've been reading the thread with interest, as my mother and dear friends were teachers. The most recent retired four years ago from teaching at Edison High because she just couldn't take the chaos in public school education anymore.
I have one brother who pulled his children from a brick and mortar Phila. public school and put them into cyber school almost a decade ago. Another sent his two to private school.
In general from birth until one's education ends, I believe in attending the best institution one can afford. Because, I've always thought the answer "what's best for the child?".....is whatever school gives the child/student the best exposure to the best teachers (education?), the best contacts/friends, the most knowledge, in the most supportive and conducive learning situation.
IF I had children, the answer to the thread's starter question would range from...."depends on the neighborhood and the school"........to heck no. More than likely: "heck no."
---------
As for the brother struggled IMMENSELY financially to send two children to private school for ALL grades first to 12th...... they live in Mt Airy where I thought schools were good. And maybe they are. So I did ask. And their mother insisted on private school. And I believe the people those children met, parents contacts they were exposed to, "quality of education they received" put them in better stead for their college years (and life) than attending a neighborhood public school....and that was in a "GOOD" neighborhood.
My grand nieces and nephews all are attending or did attend public school. Their English languages skills (grammar, diction) are HORRIBLE. I can only hope they're getting a "better education" than their speaking ability conveys.
In general I am definitely for being an education snob.....IF one can afford to be.
One co-worker who lives in RADNOR. RADNOR, mind you. Where I'd think public schools would be pretty good. She STILL went with a small Main Line private school for her only child. Of course the family has had legacy attendance there for three generations at least. One grandmother insisted, "Of course she's attending XYZ school...." I said to the co-worker, who/whom I didn't know well at all, you know you will have spent more than a half-million dollars just to get her through 12th grade?" She said, "Oh I know. But that's where we wanted her to go. We knew that was the best." And the coworker has already said, money will be no object in the girl's university options as well.
The coworker herself went to public school. But confided in me that her husband's family has money, that she was fortunate enough to marry into wealth, and that's how his family is. Only the best of everything.
What should I glean from this post? That white people send their kids to a school not necessarily because of the in-class instruction, but because the PARENTS will be around other parents that they think they want to hang around with, and who might help their kids?
Are all these white schools in the burbs just churning out hundreds of movers and shakers every year? Every kid becomes a doctor, lawyer, corporate CEO? I think not.
It's all a game to ensure that the right social classes stay together. It has very little to do with the in- class instruction.
MarketStEl's own parents tried to jump his social mobility by forcing him into schools that his social class would say he shouldnt attend. Without knowing him outside of his writings here, I would say that it didnt work, and MSE could have easily ended up where he is in life without private secondary schools and Harvard. A d I think the opposite is true also. The white people could send their kids to a local public school, and they would still end up in the station in life that they are "supposed" to end up in.
Social mobility in the USA, either upwards or downwards, is HARD. And we give secondary education way too much credit in the process.
MarketStEl's own parents tried to jump his social mobility by forcing him into schools that his social class would say he shouldnt attend. Without knowing him outside of his writings here, I would say that it didnt work, and MSE could have easily ended up where he is in life without private secondary schools and Harvard. A d I think the opposite is true also. The white people could send their kids to a local public school, and they would still end up in the station in life that they are "supposed" to end up in.
Social mobility in the USA, either upwards or downwards, is HARD. And we give secondary education way too much credit in the process.
Well, I'm certainly not a doctor, lawyer or banker, and I sure don't live in Radnor (or Mission Hills, to bring this back to my hometown) either.
But even though I live in a lower-status neighborhood (but one with a pocket of affluence in it), I'd say that while I know my choice of career isn't what my mother hoped for, I did land solidly in the middle class. Just not its upper reaches. One doesn't go into journalism for the big bucks.
But also to your point: I wrote in my 10th Harvard class reunion report, back before I'd gotten back into the swing of things journalistically, about people who expressed surprise that a Harvardian would be holding an administrative assistant position: "People assume that a Harvard degree is an automatic ticket to the upper class. It is not. It is merely a tool, and its effectiveness depends on the person using it."
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