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Diversity rule in Wake County school district, integrated schools, parents’ report income levels, low income students, rising test scores, standardized tests above grade level, maintain diversity
Well, the altnerative would be to tie social services programs to some sort of measurement that the receipients are also helping themselves. Sort of like the work to welfare program, though I'm not so sure how successful that's been.
I'm treading on another subject here, but now many F&R lunch students are illegal immigrants or children of illegal immigrants? People break the law to come here and your tax dollars are going to educate them and your children are being bussed over an hour each way (on school busses without seat belts) so the school board can homogenize the schools.
I guess I don't understand what you are proposing here. Providing welfare to people who don't want to work and providing a quality education to children of lower income families are two separate issues. There are plenty of good citizens in the USA who are classified as the "working poor". And there are plenty of poor people outside of substance abusers, and illegal immigrants. But I can see why it is convenient to some to lump all of these people together to support an argument why poor people do not deserve the same social services or benefits as wealthier people.
Again, I don't know how one would tie educational opportunities to a measurement of what families are doing to help their children with regards to the working poor. Many of them are doing just as much as everybody else.....they just have jobs that pay less. Should their child be doomed to a poor quality public education because the father or mother works as a cashier at Kroger instead of a CFO at Duke Medicine? Again ..... we are talking about public education not private higher educational opportunities, which are obviously anchored by wealth and scholarship merit based on the competitive nature of higher education institutions.
Last edited by North_Raleigh_Guy; 09-25-2007 at 12:50 PM..
Reason: Spelling!
Besides that, *most* (not all I know, but most) upper income children are not being bussed an hour away unless it's to a magnet they applied for. It's generally the lower income students who are being bussed out.
So how are they homgenizing the lower income schools? They have to find the higher income people to bus in. And when I read about overcrowding in schools like Green Hope Elementary, I have to think that next year, there will be redistricting there---won't some of those kids get bussed out?
I guess I don't understand what you are proposing here. Providing welfare to people who don't want to work and providing a quality education to children of lower income families are two separate issues. There are plnety of good citizens in the USA who are classified as the "working poor". And there are plenty of poor people outside of substance abusers, and illegal immigrants. But I can see why it is conveient to some to lump all of these people together to support an arguement why poor people do not deserve the same social services or benefits as wealthier people.
Again, I don't know how one would tie educational opportunites to a measurement of what families are doing to help their children with regards to the working poor. Many of them are doing just as much as everybody else.....they just have jobs that pay less. Shold their child be doomed to a poor quality public education because the father or mother works as a cashier at Kroger instead of a CFO at Duke Medicine? Again ..... we are talking about public education not private higher educational opportunites which are obviously anchored by wealth and scholarship merit based on the competetive nature of higher education institutions.
Well, MAtoNC! and I got off on a tangent, so it doesn't really apply to the initial post.
However, if I were to take your thoughts and extrapolate them out to the nth degree, then that cashier at Kroger should be subsidized into the $500K house in Cary because it's not fair that they have to live in a higher crime area since they have lower paying jobs.
I know I sound like a bigot and a snob but honestly, I'm not. I think we just have to accept the fact that some people will have better jobs/make more money than others. Instead of trying to homogenize the schools in order to equalize the test scores, why not try to put programs in place to attract quality teachers to the underperforming schools? After school enrichment programs (paid for by the savings in not bussing these kids). Programs to entice parents to become involved in their neighborhood school and their child's education.
Well, MAtoNC! and I got off on a tangent, so it doesn't really apply to the initial post.
However, if I were to take your thoughts and extrapolate them out to the nth degree, then that cashier at Kroger should be subsidized into the $500K house in Cary because it's not fair that they have to live in a higher crime area since they have lower paying jobs.
I don't think you are a bigot or a snob, I just think you are comparing apples to oranges. Providing children with a quality education that is publicly funded cannot be compared to nor has anything to do with privately funded housing choices. Housing costs are market driven. Public education is not market driven. We are talking about providing equal opportunity for a quality education that is funded by all of the taxpayers of the county. As a member of the county your child should have the opportunity to as good an education as anybody else’s child in the county (Again within the public education system).
The example you provided is not an extrapolation of my thoughts at all.
So if your dad was a lazy bum that didn't provide for you society should not consider it their concern to make sure you had an equal oppourtunity for education? Just want to make sure I understand what you are saying
The neglected, uneducated of today could be the criminals of tomorrow. Children are everyone's future.
I guess your willing to make the leap that by going to an underachieving school system I would be destined to be a criminal. I'd like to think I'd have some personal responsibility to become a productive member of society.
Also, I'm not saying to not educate urban kids, I'm saying it's up to that community to push through their problems.
Well, MAtoNC! and I got off on a tangent, so it doesn't really apply to the initial post.
However, if I were to take your thoughts and extrapolate them out to the nth degree, then that cashier at Kroger should be subsidized into the $500K house in Cary because it's not fair that they have to live in a higher crime area since they have lower paying jobs.
I know I sound like a bigot and a snob but honestly, I'm not. I think we just have to accept the fact that some people will have better jobs/make more money than others. Instead of trying to homogenize the schools in order to equalize the test scores, why not try to put programs in place to attract quality teachers to the underperforming schools? After school enrichment programs (paid for by the savings in not bussing these kids). Programs to entice parents to become involved in their neighborhood school and their child's education.
Interesting spin I have seen put on the word "entitlement" here. Seems to me that if we are truly going to have a public education system that is equitable, ALL students should be "entitled" to the same quality education.
Your spin on this is that somehow the lower income children of hard working parents in service occupations shouldn't feel "entitled" to the same quality of education that upper middle class children are "entitled" to by virtue of what one person accurately described as winning the sperm lottery?
Because you have a well paying job and can afford to live in an affluent town your children are "entitled" to a quality education and should not be inconvenienced by having to travel to school. Apparently it is OK though for the lower income children to be bussed into affluent districts, again, don't want to inconvenience the wealthy.
Your "extrapolation" of the need to provide a fair and balanced educational opportunity to ALL students to the NEED to provide a 400K home to a service worker is downright arrogant.
There are alot of factors at play in why lower socioeconomic schools perform at a lesser level, not the least of which is peer influence in how to perform and conduct oneself in the classroom. Many lower performing schools already have "better" teachers. Teachers I know are committed to helping in poorer districts and get more satisfaction out of seeing students succeed that might otherwise not rather than deal with nothing but helicopter parents at more affluent schools where Chad and Muffy's parents will be breathing down their necks if grades aren't what they feel the children deserve.
Another question that has always plagued me as well: when I hear people complain that their kids don't get to go to a "neighborhood" school and they're going to send them to private instead. How is a private school a "neighborhood school"? It makes me think that the argument is not REALLY about neighborhood schools.
It probably has more about stability, as in attending the same school year-after-year. With all the busing that Wake County does, it is hard to predict where you child may be going next year, much less 5 years from now. With neighborhood schools, many parents see reassignment as less likely.
If you compare the % of students on free and reduced lunch in Wake County to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools (comparable in size), you'll see that our socioeconomic diversity policy has benefited schools here. It's an answer to the "No Child Left Behind" law. Charlotte-Meck. has many schools with >90% free and reduced lunch. Imagine how hard it must be to get highly qualified, highly motivated teachers to work in those schools. Those kids deserve great teachers, but they're not likely to get many in such a setting.
Use greatschools.net to check out districts' data. Charlotte-Meck. has 20 elementary schools with >90% free and reduced lunch. According to this site, Wake County has 1 - Mount Vernon. However, I checked the Wake County website, and Mt. Vernon is a middle school with only 32 students...
P.S. I'm tracked out, not message boarding on the clock!
Charlotte and Mecklenburg county have many highly motivated teachers in our most struggling schools. Our superintendent has seen to that by weeding out weak and ineffective teachers, firing them after a probationary period if they showed no improvement, and offering bonuses for competant teachers to transfer to more struggling schools. He has retained the right to reassign teachers if more do not step up to the plate as needed. He has already reassigned some of the finest, most experienced principals.
He is also calling for PARENTS to be held accountable for their childrens educations. Until we quit expecting schools to do it all and force the parents who do not do their part to get involved we will never see 100% success of all students.
Busing may have been the answer at some point in time in the past when this was a much smaller system - but it became very impractical after we grew over 100,000 students. People here were THRILLED to go back to neighborhood schools - all people, black, white, brown or yellow. Busing was tearing neighborhoods apart and robbing them of their cohesiveness. Many lower income families lived so far from their childrens schools they could not be involved there, or even make it to parent nights because of transportation issues.
Yes, some of our schools (maybe 20) struggle with issues of poverty among their students, but a certain amount of poverty has always existed in this world, even since Biblical times. What is needed is an involved community of volunteers to mentor, tutor and generally interact with kids in these schools. Many of our churches and large corporations have stepped forward to help in that regard. I would much rather see the problem handled this way, then to see us go back to the social experiment of busing.
Last edited by lovesMountains; 09-25-2007 at 02:37 PM..
I personally like the concept of neighborhood schools. In Colorado where I taught, there were schools that had a higher F&R lunch population, and a higher minority population, but it gave those schools opportunities to bring in the programs that were best suited for the kids that they served. And there were some great things happening in a lot of those schools. Were the test scores as high as the other areas? No, but when you are dealing with working poor communities, there are a whole other set of variables that play into test scores.
I don't see why people expect to be on level footing out of the womb.
Well, as that's one of the main concepts this country was founded on (all men are created equal and all that), it shouldn't be surprising that people have that expectation.
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