I bolded the biggest key point in your post, the majority of which I agree with wholeheartedly. If there are smart kids at school with each other, public education is fine for them. Even so, they still have diversity. Now, the diversity in my neighborhood is one of whites, a few blacks, a few Mexicans, and a shitload of Asians of all nations. Most of the Asians want absolutely nothing to do with the rest of us stupid riff raff. I feel bad for my 2nd grader because she is only attracted to Asian boys--Chinese, in particular, and their parents are never going to let their sons date a stupid American. In short, my average kids have struggled in their elementary school, stuggled to even be average. My older daughter had two male Asian classmates who scored perfect scores on the math portion of the SAT when they were in 4th grade. Damn... Now, my older daughter is in middle school with a much larger pool of kids from more diverse neighborhoods, even some subsidized housing. Whereas she struggled to make B's and C's in elementary, she's now making all A's and a B. She's still learning a lot, but now she's been thrown into the mix with kids who are less prepared to be good students. It will spiral downward that way until 10th grade. Plano has elementary in K-5, middle in 6-8, high schools in 9-10, and senior highs for 11-12. By the time kids make it to 11th grade, the cream has risen to the top and almost every kid that gets there graduates.
One of the problems that happend due to integration was the white flight from public schools. As so many say "If my kid isn't going there why should I pay?" They vote down taxes that pay for schools and education. This is foolish and short sighted because the decline of broad and deep quality education is part of the reason we have the issues that are around today. It would be nice if a reverse of the flight occured but as even wealthy minorities (of all stripe) continue to follow the trend it will be difficult.
Judge Parker's desegregation mandate in 1980 ruined public schools in Baton Rouge. I still feel that a freedom of choice should have been in place for any and all minority students who wanted to attend higher performing schools. It's not unlike the voucher idea that Jindal threw out there last summer. But it wouldn't have caused EBR's public school system to fail. Failure of public schools should not be an option, as education is the only surefire way to get people off of welfare permanently.
Stacy I applaud your last statement. We need to remenber that every day and that it is a PUBLIC DUTY to provide a quality education to ALL. It is the best investment a society can make. In many cases private schools (in most areas of the south) suck up the best students and teachers leaving a lower capability group in public schools. This creates a self re enforcinging model that parents concerned with their children do what they have to to get them in the best school and poor public school performance drives the best away. Sort of like a dog chasing its tail. This can be changed..The New Orleans Charter School district has converted a failed system into a leading system. It is happening all over but in small bites. Sounds like your district never went through this an they deserve applause. You do as well many times over. As to the history I believe it was the response to Parkers order that ruined public schools in BR. Mind you they weren't much to begin with. I went to school with Judge Parkers son and lived the deseg conflict in high school till I graduated in 1970. I was there when the first blacks were transfered to Lee High. You could cut the tension with a knife.. the first blacks were basically ignored unless they tried to play football then they were run off (88 open the gate). It wasn't until my senior year that a few quality black athletes showed they were good enough to respect that they had any acceptance. In retrospect it is almost funny that the members of the team were accepted as good guys but the rest were n words. At that time there were few private schools that were viable options. Catholic High and St Josephs were not much. The next 10 years changed that and chuch supported private schools spang up like mushrooms after a rain. Had our leaders manned up and faced the fact that integration was coming (by 1980 it had been gathering steam for 25 years (Brown v Board of Ed)) and made the investment to do well rather than grudgingly make do, we would have been better off. This includes blacks as well as whites. Whites were not ready to do the best by all children and blacks weren't ready to admit that 100+ years of repression left them far behind educationally. The students AND the teachers needed remediation in the worst way to even meet to poor standards of East Baton rouge Parish schools. We are paying for this today all over the US as the Baton rouge model has been followed almost everywhere integration has been mandated.
all of that is correct, and i was bussed across town forever to the ghetto for school, and it was a lot of wasted time and integration was failing anyways, and i would have loved to go to a neighborhood school, because all my smart (mostly white but some south asian) friends were bussed to faraway with me. i would have absolutely loved to walk to a small school in my neighborhood, instead i had to get up before dawn to ride all around the universe on a bus. education is one of the few big government programs i endorse, because social class mobility is essential. smart poor kids are important to our future. but the problem is not really solvable with neighborhood school, because a poor kid lives in a poor neighborhood and goes to school with louts that do not give a shit. and the peer group is such a strong influence the kid that should be studying sartre and goalkeeping the state champions and banging the hot cheerleader and applying to yale, is instead wasting time with idiots. so all my neighborhood kids, they are the smartest kids in town, their parents work as chemists/engineers for the local plants or are professors at LSU, and they have a chance, and taking them away from the ghetto kids is good for them, but bad for ghetto kids. so its tricky. you want integration because it helps the crap schools, but it is tricky. and the influence of the poor but smart bangladeshi kid is great for the smart rich white kid. but the kids whose parents do not care, he is fucking it up for everyone. and the solution is twofold: the ending of government protections for unions, which will force teachers unions to have standards, and charter schools. and the problem there is that charter schools or vouchers want autonomy to teach weird shit. and also religious schools are of course a fucking disgrace and should be burned to the ground.
I lived in Baton Rouge when the 1980 order finally came down, and Winston is right, of course, EBR needed to integrate on its own before the federal government got involved in doing it FOR EBR. My dad has always said that (and he was at Catholic High at the time, so he didn't really have a dog in the fight--though I was in public school, a 4th grader.) For 5th grade, instead of getting bused to the ghetto, I went to a brand new private school, and actually, I received a good education there before we moved out to Livingston Parish when I was in 8th grade. In fact, I skated through most of high school because of the basics I learned in private school. Losing neighborhood schools was awful for Baton Rouge, though the students in poor neighborhoods should have been able to choose to attend better schools, and the district should have had to transport them to said better schools. That way, the kids in poor neighborhoods who didn't give a shit would've continued that way, and the kids in poor neighborhoods who did care could be educated. The public school where I teach has 40% free and reduced lunch students, up from 3% in 1997 when I first started there (a huge apartment complex in our attendance zone went HUD in 2002...) The rest of our zone is middle class to upper middle class neighborhoods. A number of the low income kids truly don't try very hard to succeed, but we have a program called AVID, which takes low income kids who will be the first generation to go to college and places them in honors courses with heavy support to help them succeed. The AVID kids are quite impressive, as a general rule, they may have a chance to break the chain of poverty and poor education in their families. AVID follows these kids all the way through high school and helps them apply to college and search for financial aid and scholarships. My district is going through a demographic shift in a big way, but we aren't just deciding to let it go. We are trying to capture the motivated students and trying to motivated the unmotivated ones.
To me, that's the key to the kingdom - motivating the unmotivated kids. If we could that on a nationwide level, we'd be in a much, much better place as a country. Any tricks of the trade you can share, Stacey? Other than AVID, just how do teachers and educators motivate these kids? And how big of an impact do the parents of these kids have? If the parents don't care, do their kids have a realistic chance?
All of this is correct. Growing up I went to hybrid schools that had 2 different programs, however my elementary school was excellent and it was a neighborhood school and some of my friends went to school, but it was one of the first magnet programs in Shreveport and it really set my course in life as far education is concerned, but my middle and high school i had to go across town to go to good schools that had magnet programs. I always wondered why in my schools most of my friends didnt have the same classes, but i figured it out in middle school. But the stigma with black parents who have education, good jobs and decent money is that we want to send our kids to private school in fear that public schools are inadequate or in fear of what public schools does at chances of higher education. Its wrong and now you guys have me rethinking about sending my child to the private christian school
I do not think it is wrong at all. I think, like anything, it is entirely situational. A lot of times with a private school, they are have strict values that stay consistent over a wide range.
My fears about private school didn't outweight the positives....in our situation. I think it can go either way. There probably is not a wrong answer, just make the best decision you can after doing your research and don't worry about it.
