Raising social involvement, self awareness and self improvement topics, because our communities are the sum of our personal beliefs, behaviors, action or inaction. Only "we" can improve our family, work place, school, city, country, etc.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Education: Funding and Prejudice
We are back at it again. These are pretty inetersting postings and comments.
"...an inequitable allocation of resources, such as schools in more affluent communities receiving a disproportionate share of monies..."
With this and the "harsh, punitive approaches to minor disciplinary infractions, leading to excess suspensions, arrests and administrative transfers of children of color, and particularly African-American boys" identified as symptoms of the "institutionalized racism" of our public schools, I find that her desire for a "paradigm shift" correct but unlikely to happen. She does hint at the solution, however, of "treating kids and parents as clients to be served." You do that with school choice, of course, thus getting rid of most of the hidebound rules keeping most schools from making that "paradigm shift."
Just to be clear, she may have the "soft bigotry of low expectations" part correct, but to say that predominantly black, inner city schools get less funding is just incorrect. In fact, it's about 2:1 the other way around. And no discipline policy I know specifies that "children of color" be treated any differently; it is the behavior that gets a kid "in trouble." That this is disproportionately vested in one race of student ought to be addressed in other ways, that promote better behavior, rather than punished.
I fixed the 2nd link...
ReplyDelete"...an inequitable allocation of resources, such as schools in more affluent communities receiving a disproportionate share of monies..."
ReplyDeleteWith this and the "harsh, punitive approaches to minor disciplinary infractions, leading to excess suspensions, arrests and administrative transfers of children of color, and particularly African-American boys" identified as symptoms of the "institutionalized racism" of our public schools, I find that her desire for a "paradigm shift" correct but unlikely to happen. She does hint at the solution, however, of "treating kids and parents as clients to be served." You do that with school choice, of course, thus getting rid of most of the hidebound rules keeping most schools from making that "paradigm shift."
Just to be clear, she may have the "soft bigotry of low expectations" part correct, but to say that predominantly black, inner city schools get less funding is just incorrect. In fact, it's about 2:1 the other way around. And no discipline policy I know specifies that "children of color" be treated any differently; it is the behavior that gets a kid "in trouble." That this is disproportionately vested in one race of student ought to be addressed in other ways, that promote better behavior, rather than punished.
ReplyDelete