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MY DAUGHTER IS THREE YEARS OLD! THREE F*CKING YEARS OLD! Like most children of her age, she doesn't understand that there are racial differences really yet.
As long as she's got basic algebra down by now, I'm sure she'll be fine.
You can easily "have a clue" about where your kids are going to school in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. There are easily accessible and understandable district maps. There are comprehensive explanations and instructions re: the magnet system.
People can decide for themselves if PPS is a good choice. I don't think it is, but that is up to others to decide. You started your post with pointing our a grammatical error and ended it with a personal attack. Class.
The Charters and magnets are becoming more difficult. How about we look at this subject from children's point of view a little bit. There are going to be haves and have nots don't you think? So your child didn't get into CAPA or whatever. Ah, that must feel great for a young teen! That in itself is a HUGE negative in the PPS. So you child didn't get in and then what? They get thrown into Westinghouse or whatever? Then they have some crazy long bus ride, leaving at before 6:00AM and getting home at 5:00PM? I have witnessed it first hand. I feel for those dealing with all this stuff. I can't imagine doing it, but for those that did get their kids in a little bubble, good for you. Hope their friends did as well, or that would sure feel bad for the friend left out.
Send them to a parochial or private school. The school tuition, especially elementary school, for several of them is still "cheaper" than tacking on an extra hour of driving each day even if you consider the housing prices to be equal (which they aren't if you don't live in a PPS area with a good school).
Do not buy into the Ponzi-scheme suburban school district hype. People (some not all) justify living in an area they would prefer not to, enduring commutes they hate all on the mistaken belief that they are making these sacrifices for their kid's education. "Deplorable conditions" suggests that you may already have fallen for the group think. (BTW, don't believe me, look into it yourself).
As has been stated many times, by far the most important factor in your child's education is you, your socio-economic level and educational achievement. Suburban schools appear better because many advantaged kids go there. Inputs dictate the outputs and it's unlikely that your children will be harmed by attending a City school.
I am acutely aware that my involvement as a parent will be the biggest contribute to my child's success and that the economic success of the parent is the number one indicator of a child's probable success. So while I'm sure my child would survive going to a bad school I'm not about to have them attend Westinghouse to be a martyr for my belief in public schools. I know a couple of teachers there so I wouldn't be so quick to assume that a child "wouldn't be harmed" by going.
Whether you agree with it or not, schools are second only to price when it comes to home buying decisions. If a parent has the means they are going to give they're child the best educational opportunities they can afford and if that means moving from Stanton Heights to Mt. Lebo., Shaler, Pine, or wherever, then they will do so. The magnet programs are a way for PPS to address the flight of families away from the city and I would even venture so far as to say they will be an integral part of revitalizing some city neighborhoods.
It's called code switching. My sister-in-law is a language specialist and claims that it's a real thing in her profession . It's not really anything that's formally taught so much as it usually comes from either achieving a higher education and/or operating in a professional culture that has a different language/dialect/accent than a person was raised. I apparently do it a lot and have been humorously called out for it by colleagues.
Just a minor correction, switching between two dialects in different situations isn't code switching. Code switching is when you use a mix of both dialects (or even languages) in the middle of a single sentence of conversation.
Whether you agree with it or not, schools are second only to price when it comes to home buying decisions. If a parent has the means they are going to give they're child the best educational opportunities they can afford and if that means moving from Stanton Heights to Mt. Lebo., Shaler, Pine, or wherever, then they will do so. The magnet programs are a way for PPS to address the flight of families away from the city and I would even venture so far as to say they will be an integral part of revitalizing some city neighborhoods.
Just because that's what people are doing doesn't mean that's what people rationally should be doing. My entire point is that "good schools" shouldn't be that high on the list and that all too often people make their decisions through the prism of a false choice. We're conditioned to believe the conventional wisdom that you've just regurgitated.
The question I've asked myself is, "Why would I make sacrifices to the other parts of my life that both I and my family enjoy to live somewhere I'd rather not in order to gain a perceived educational advantage for my kids that I can't quantify?"
I wasn't implying you were a bad parent. You shared something in the context of a thread where you also heavily questioned why black children aren't succeeding better at the magnet and charter schools. It inspired me to wonder if entering a school only speaking a dialect hindered learning, specifically the dialect of the children whose performance you were wondering about. I have since focused my discuss on that, not your daughter specifically. You brought up the topic of performance of black students. It's a topic you commonly raise. I guess you don't really want to brainstorm about it but want to hear your own thoughts on the matter.
I actually said black kids are not performing well at ECS. Black kids perform fine (regarding national norms) at PPS magnets. In fact, the magnets within PPS are just about the only schools in the county where a substantial number of black students score advanced or proficient on PSSA tests. Some suburban schools score a bit better, but most of the top suburban schools have so few black students no scores are released (less than 12 are tested), and many of the ones which have enough black enrollment that test scores are released have less than 20 black students.
Regardless, black-white test score gaps are a nationwide issue. Black students do not score equal or greater to white students in any school in Allegheny County. In many where the scores come closest, it's because the white students score unusually low (e.g., Sto-Rox), not because the black students are unusually advanced. The gap has been persistent despite all efforts to deal with it within the U.S. context. The following can be said, generally speaking.
1. It's not a result of disproportionate poverty. For example, breaking down SAT scores by income quintile, the gap between black and white scores is steady across all economic groups. Wealthier blacks do much better than poor blacks, but their scores lag wealthy whites by the same margins that poor black scores lag poor whites.
2. It doesn't seem to be a result of black kids not having adequate resources in schools. In many states there are fairly generous transfer formulas to ensure poor districts get funding, to the point where many poor districts actually have higher per-pupil spending. Studies have suggested that outside funding does nothing to improve results, only funding raised within the district does, which is of course correlated with overall wealth.
3. Sending black students to suburban schools which are higher-scoring doesn't seem to do anything past a certain point. If there are only a handful of black students, they tend to do well. But once a school has a significant percentage, there is no real difference between how they would perform in an integrated, mixed-race school and their racially monolithic home school. That said, it does seem to make a huge difference in the level of overall delinquency.
4. Black kids adopted by white families tend to score similar to white children during the elementary years, but by the high school years, show no difference from black kids raised in black families. This seems to suggest that parenting isn't as strong of a determinant as some critics would say.
As to how to interpret this, there are a number of possibilities.
One, which I really have issue with, is it's actually due to genetic differences in intelligence. The social ramifications of this being true would be horrible for America. Also, I think that the data in many areas argues against this. For example, repeated studies have shown no correlation between light skin color and high IQ in blacks. In addition, a study in the 1960s in Germany of the children of American servicemen and German women found no difference between the intelligence of the children of black and white servicemen. Finally recent data from the UK suggests that the population of recent African immigrants there is now as high-scoring as whites (the longer-standing Afro-caribbean population has long had lagging test scores, but not at the absolute bottom).
Another possibility is environmental concerns. Black mothers are still far less likely to breast feed, for example, and the effect of breast versus formula feeding on intelligence is strong enough that a third of the gap could be accounted for in this alone. This may be the reason why biracial children who have a black mother tend to score more poorly than those who have a white mother. In addition, there is still far too much lead in inner-city neighborhoods, not just on peeling windows, but in the soil as a result of the long use of leaded gasoline. Even subclinical levels of lead exposure lower IQ by a few points. Fixing these issues would be expensive, and it would take a generation to see results, but it would be a great boon for this country.
There's also the hypothesis of stereotype threat. Essentially we internalize stereotypes about what we can achieve, and these cause us to fail at things we have the capacity to do. Studies have shown, for example, that you can lower the test score of blacks on aptitude tests by making them check off their race on the exam before it begins. Similar results have been found for other groups, such as women involving math aptitude tests. This helps explain why adopted black children fall behind later (they eventually realize they are black, and blacks aren't supposed to be as smart as whites), and why German biracial kids didn't score any different from their classmates - they were not raised within a culture where they were expected to underachieve.
Another possibility is the "acting white" hypothesis. Basically kids, especially older kids, still tend to self-segregate. If there are enough black kids in a mostly white school, they will band together. Some of the children may want to succeed, but they are then taunted by their peers, as studiousness is seen as a white trait, and to apply yourself fully in school means to turn your back on your circle of friends. This is somewhat more problematic than stereotype threat, as it is essentially another hypothesis to explain many of the same things. It may explain, however, why second-generation black immigrants (from the Caribbean or Africa) tend to do very well in schools in the U.S. (they don't see African-Americans as their peers), but their children (who are more fully acculturated into black culture) don't perform any differently.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopes
If the education system can't be changed quickly enough for students entering the school system, it would be advantageous for parents to be aware and try to provide a basic foundation of standard English.
Quite honestly, parents can't instill what they don't have. If you want your kids to have upper-middle class speech patterns, you ensure they go to school with upper-middle class peers. Someone who speaks with a heavy regional accent (AAVE, Pittsburghese, or whatever), will have no more luck on their own getting their child to "speak proper" than a Mexican immigrant who speaks English with a heavy accent.
Just because that's what people are doing doesn't mean that's what people rationally should be doing. My entire point is that "good schools" shouldn't be that high on the list and that all too often people make their decisions through the prism of a false choice. We're conditioned to believe the conventional wisdom that you've just regurgitated.
The question I've asked myself is, "Why would I make sacrifices to the other parts of my life that both I and my family enjoy to live somewhere I'd rather not in order to gain a perceived educational advantage for my kids that I can't quantify?"
Its got nothing to do with martyrdom.
So, good schools aren't important to you. Ok. I bet a good education is important to you. Right? Basically, you are in favor the same thing as the suburban parents you just disagree on how to get there. The choices you made are personal and wouldn't necessarily be the right choices for others.
Most parents are willing to make sacrifices for their kids.
I am acutely aware that my involvement as a parent will be the biggest contribute to my child's success and that the economic success of the parent is the number one indicator of a child's probable success. So while I'm sure my child would survive going to a bad school I'm not about to have them attend Westinghouse to be a martyr for my belief in public schools. I know a couple of teachers there so I wouldn't be so quick to assume that a child "wouldn't be harmed" by going.
Unless you live in Highland Park, you should cut out the hyperbole. It's the only non-black area which feeds to Westinghouse, and even then, it's not the entire neighborhood (although most if it - everything to the west of N Negley).
Of course, Milliones/UPrep takes in a huge amount of non-black areas, but is also 95% black, as essentially no one outside of Garfield and the Hill District goes there. Still, I never hear anything outright dangerous happening at that school. I can't help but wonder if they decided to locate the school in more neutral territory like Lawrenceville instead of the Hill District if it would have been a more evenly balanced school.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Mon
The magnet programs are a way for PPS to address the flight of families away from the city and I would even venture so far as to say they will be an integral part of revitalizing some city neighborhoods.
Indeed. I'm still not entirely sure the wisdom of magnets on a K-5 level, but the whole purpose of magnets was to find some alternative to bussing which allowed the voluntary integration of schools, and kept some proportion of white parents within areas with undesirable schools.
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