This story caught my attention on the news last night: http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/04/14/omaha.schools.ap/ A step backwards for civil rights and educational equality? Or an opportunity for communities to take control of their children's education? We're not supposed to favor segregation. On the other hand, the segregation already exists, because of geography and socio-economics. It's distasteful to acknowledge, but it's reality. As someone in favor of keeping decision-making power in education as localized as possible, I have to admit that I like this idea - despite the distasteful aspects.
So will the black school district have two or three times less funding than the white one due to property tax collections?
If they need a current example of natural segregation and its effects on the public school system, then they need to come up to the Detroit Metro area and see the huge difference between predominantly black schools in the downtown area versus the majority white schools in the suburbs. The Detroit Metropolitan area is one of, if not, the most segregated in our country. This "natural" segregation has only helped fuel racial tensions, not promote improved race relations.
Cute. Then they can save money by paying less for new hires when all the quality (experiened) teachers quit.
I saw this on NBC Nightly News as well. I found it very interesting that the strongest proponent of this new segregated school district was, in fact, African-American. I believe that the NAACP has already stated their decision to challenge the school district in court, and I just don't see any way where this could stand up to a challenge in Federal court. the legal arguments should be very interesting....
Isn't this the case in most cities already anyway? I saw that report on NBC, too. They flashed a map of the redistricting proposal. It didn't look like they needed to manipulate the districts 'Tom DeLay-style' or anything to get the ethnic percentages they are shooting for. It just looked like "this part of town is the black part, here's where the Latinos live and this is the white part." Like they just divided Omaha into the appropriate thirds and had their segregated districts right there.
This is something that always just kills me. Why shouldn't local communities take control of: 1) Their own nuclear power? 2) There own highway systems? etc. There are a lot of local dumbasses out there who want to teach creationism, too. We are not going to stay competitive until we realize that how inner city kids are schooled in Detroit and how farm kids are schooled in nebraska has an effect on all of us.
Inner city kids in Detroit and farm kids in Nebraska should not be schooled in the same ways. They have different needs. The local dumbasses unfortunately know more about the needs of the local kids than some centralized dumbass authority, who resides far away.
For starters, there aren't going to be many--make that ANY--'farm kids' in the Omaha school system. And North Omaha--where the majority of African-Americans in Omaha live--is very much an urban, somewhat rough, neighborhood. How different from inner-city Detroit is that again? Secondly, the State Department of Education is based in Lincoln, some 50 miles away. At the 75 MPH speed limit on I-80, that's less than an hour from downtown office to downtown office. Those 'dumbass authorities' aren't that far away. Thirdly, you assert that inner-city Detroit kids and Nebraska farm kids should not be schooled in the same way. Why? You say that they have different needs. I'd like you to give an example. Do inner-city kids not need math? Do Nebraska farmkids not need a basic understanding of biology?
No they don't. You are just jumping on the bandwagon. A great school in either location can do a better job of teaching kids in the other school than a poor one at that area. In virtually every human endeavor we recognize that some things are better than others, but in education we go through this cliche that local folks know best. Bullshit. There is no emperical support for that in the slightest. However, local control does make locals feel better and does give them power. Great. Now what does that have to do with education? In other words, a great educator in Detroit is going to be able to be a great educator in Nebraska. And sound educational practices are going to work all over. Because every educator knows what it means to teach someone who is not getting it. And the problem with our educational system is that we neither have a national direction for education nor do we empower educators to teach nor do we provide education with the funds it needs. As a fedeal taxpayer, I don't want to have to support poorly educated students in Detroit or Nebraska and I don't want those students to be economic drains on our society. So no, I don't think its right to cede responsiblity for children's education to segregationalists in nebraska or creaionists in Missouri. And I do have the power to vote for national leaders who get it. The problem is, we have drones who through out the local control arguments while they are cutting school funding.
New Jersey has all of this and more. Highly segregated school systems with under-performing inner city schools that out-spend the rich suburbs by several thousand dollars per pupil (mandated by the NJ Supreme Court in the Abbott decision and hated by the residents in the suburbs who foot most of the bill) Property taxes have been skyrocketing and the latest round of school budgets did not fare well. To add insult to injury several BILLION dollars were appropriated a few yrs. ago to re-build decaying inner city schools and SURPRISE, SURPRISE, no one kept track of the money, local administrators squandered it and sweetheart deals with connected contractors were made. The money disappeared in no time so there are half-built schools in neighborhoods around the state and it will take BILLIONS more to finish the job. A real disgrace.
D. My only point is that in education we spew these cliches and its obvious we need to rethink them. Borders don't matter anymore. My company is going to your company, telling your management to fire you and let us hire you, and then one year later we are firing you and hiring an Indian. We need a national education policy just to stave off what is certainly going to be a loss of relative wealth to other nations. I won't send my children to public schools here in Dallas because there simply are too many distractions. Local control is killing education. And it is because we have no national leadership in educatinon.
I'm sorry, but I'm not spewing any cliches. I'm speaking from my direct experience. In New York City, all schools are required to teach a certain reading and writing curriculum. That curriculum was developed and refined in schools in Staten Island. Staten Island is not that far from Bed-Stuy, as the crow flies. Yet what works in that SI laboratory school and what works in my ghetto school ARE NOT THE SAME. It's nice to think that successful schools are doing things right, while failing things are doing things wrong. How simple. So if we can just get the failing schools to do what the successful schools are doing.... oh, if only it were so simple. Take any school in Staten Island or Westchester or upstate or anywhere, and replace the students there with the students who attend a failing school in the inner city. Assuming they make no changes in staff or curriculum nor resources, the successful school will start to fail. While it's true that math is math wherever you go, it's not true that all math instructional strategies are equal for all populations of students wherever you go. And the same is true for all subjects. Let me get specific for you. The writing curriculum I'm required to teach strongly de-emphasizes mechanics, grammar and spelling. Instead, it favors encouraging students to understand writing as a process, to feel confident as authors and to feel ownership of their own work. Each writing lesson consists of me teaching for 10 minutes on a writing strategy. Example: Strong writers use lots of sensory details to describe the setting. Then the students write independently for 40 minutes, while I confer individually. Then a few students share their work for 5 or 10 minutes. This approach works wonderfully in a classroom where students feel confident as writers, where their behavior is under control, where they have a grasp of the basic rules of the English language. In my classroom, on the other hand, it's not so pretty. I rarely get to confer individually because I have to be on top of their behavior 100% of the time. The students have very little exposure to standard written English, and therefore unsurprisingly can't write in it. More than half of them are reading and writing below grade level, and therefore feel frustrated and are unable to accomplish the task that I, with my ever high expectations, have set for them. So instead they waste their time, act out, or just produce inferior work. In the end, what they really need to know most - the basics of writing in English - does not get taught. It is simply not enough to say that writing is writing and math is math and what works at school A should work in school B. Inner city schools face challenges that schools in more affluent neighborhoods do not. Many students come in to first grade without having attended kindergarten. Many of those first graders don't even know their letters and numbers. Some of them have never been read to at home. Their parents are often woefully undereducated. The vast majority come from single parent households. Often the one working parent works odd hours or night shifts, and is not even available to help the student with homework - assuming that the parent is capable of doing so. I've encountered third graders who were unable to complete homework assignments because their parents did not know how to multiply two digit by one digit numbers. Inner city schools have higher rates of malnutrition, lead poisoning, parental alcohol/drug use during pregnancy, parental alcohol/drug use in the home, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and asthma, all of which amount to learning challenges in the classroom. (Lest you think that asthma is not a learning issue, consider that in the writing curriculum I mentioned above - as in EVERY subject taught in NYC - the 10 minute lesson is REQUIRED to occur with the students gathered sitting on a rug. Of course, the custodians, per their contract, are NOT required to vacuum the rugs. And the teachers are not provided with vacuums! Dusty rugs are only a nuisance, really, unless your school is in a community in which asthma is endemic.) I don't believe for a second that localizing control will immediately turn things around for failing schools. On the other hand, the more local control, the easier it is to assign blame. Right now, in a huge system like NYC, you have blame being shifted all over the place as schools continue to fail. Teachers wail that they cannot choose how to teach, but when their students fail it's all their fault anyway. Of course, the teachers can't be fired so it's back to square one... At least, when control is localized, the buck stops...somewhere.
I have to say that, two years ago, before I started teaching at THE WORST SCHOOL IN NEW YORK CITY (tm), I would have agreed with everything you stated above.
D., thanks for the posts, but what you describing is sublocalized strategy. That the teacher on the floor or the department on the floor knows better is not what I am talking about. That is a given. And the fact that we have a national strategy will not get in the way of that teaching any more than local school board. Nothing I said would get in the way of you having the freedom to teach as you want. The very point that your cliches mislead us and your longer explanation clarified things goes directly to my point -- get away from these stock phrases and we can talk about things The next one to lose is the ol' "bucks stops" phrase.
Well, sorry for the "buck stops" phrase, if it bothers you. What you're seeming to not understand is that, if there is a national educational strategy or policy, then by definition it will get in the way of teachers' decision-making. Otherwise, what is the point of the national strategy? With federal money comes federal control. What sort of national strategy do you have in mind? What decisions should not be made at the local level? Hiring? Curriculum? Class size? The school/classroom resources to purchase? Teacher training and professional development? Discipline policy? What do you suppose is going on at failing schools that is causing them to fail? How do you suppose that a national strategy can fix that?
It bothers me when it is just spew. Tell me how local control (specific examples) is always right and always trumps "federal control" -- which in education, I frankly don't know what you specifically mean is holding back education. You mean like in all federal grants to higher education and all federal funding for highways and all federal funding for law enforcement and all federal funding for aid to poor people and medicaid, etc. If that is so bad, why don't people just refuse federal funding? I'll tell you why. Because sometimes the benefit to federal funding outweighs the cost. But by all means, through out another cliche about federal funding. I don't know. Which is why I would sound moronic if I said it would be a cure all or it would be pointless. Which is the only reason I have a beef with your argument. If the feds provided significant funds to schools, then by all means I wouldn't mind the feds saying that they would make certain funding linked to class ize and curriculm and training. I would have no problem with the feds providing additional funding so that schools could provide better equipment and books and supplies to students. Would you? Why would anyone, especially an open minded educator, automatically write off additional funding like this to schools? 1) Inadequate funding. Additional federal funding could help. 2) Inadequate focus on science and technology. Federal direction and federal funded programs could help. 3) Discipline. (Getting the troublemakers out of the way.) Obviously, the feds can't make decisions about local troublemakers. But funding for additional classroom space might help school districts with programs. But in reality, I think things like number 2 above could alleviate this by giving students the ability to engage in special programs, before or after school. 4) National programs designed to award exceptional teachers. How about a $10,000 award to 1000 teachers in the US who are exceptional according to their principals?