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By way of a former classmate I found out that the school district where I went to middle/high school is dropping its diversity policy in favor of "neighborhood schools." The NAACP is protesting. From an urban planning perspective I'm yelling, "If you wanted neighborhood schools you should have built NEIGHBORHOODS, not cul-de-sacs where you can't even walk to the grocery store, never mind the elementary school!" Raleigh could be a poster for white flight and suburban sprawl, and there's a lot of racial division in housing (I haven't researched this myself but I would be unsurprised if redlining was an issue), and these things are all connected. I'm not pretending that getting up at 6 a.m. to catch a bus, as I did all through high school, is a good time, but this is not how you fix the problem.*
For all that I'm not a huge fan of the Wake County public schools I felt like they had less educational inequality than NYC does. In Raleigh and in NYC, I've worked in poor neighborhoods, I've worked with kids whose families didn't have a lot of resources, and I think the diversity standards of Raleigh's schools ultimately made a big difference. There were "better" schools and "worse" schools, but you couldn't guarantee by moving all the way out to the suburbs that your kid would get into one of the "good" schools... and sadly this is what people are all mad about, I think, more than having to get up early for the bus.
In a lot of cities, schools are becoming more segregated rather than less. And it's a real shame that Raleigh is jumping on that bandwagon.
*I should specify that in my case it was at least semi-voluntary. 7th grade was so bad for me that I applied to one of the magnet schools, and continued because they had more interesting electives, more AP options, etc. But spending 45 minutes to an hour on the bus every morning was very typical for people I knew.
ETA Oh dear. A Wake County parent was quoted in the News and Observer article saying: "I'm against forced busing. This is the United States of America. People should not be forced in Wake County to do anything they don't want to do."
Lady, where were you when they were making me run laps around the track? Making people do things they don't want to do is the entire premise of schooling!
For all that I'm not a huge fan of the Wake County public schools I felt like they had less educational inequality than NYC does. In Raleigh and in NYC, I've worked in poor neighborhoods, I've worked with kids whose families didn't have a lot of resources, and I think the diversity standards of Raleigh's schools ultimately made a big difference. There were "better" schools and "worse" schools, but you couldn't guarantee by moving all the way out to the suburbs that your kid would get into one of the "good" schools... and sadly this is what people are all mad about, I think, more than having to get up early for the bus.
In a lot of cities, schools are becoming more segregated rather than less. And it's a real shame that Raleigh is jumping on that bandwagon.
*I should specify that in my case it was at least semi-voluntary. 7th grade was so bad for me that I applied to one of the magnet schools, and continued because they had more interesting electives, more AP options, etc. But spending 45 minutes to an hour on the bus every morning was very typical for people I knew.
ETA Oh dear. A Wake County parent was quoted in the News and Observer article saying: "I'm against forced busing. This is the United States of America. People should not be forced in Wake County to do anything they don't want to do."
Lady, where were you when they were making me run laps around the track? Making people do things they don't want to do is the entire premise of schooling!