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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!
Thoughts
19/7/10 21:40 (UTC)I don't really approve of segregated neighborhoods. That causes a lot of problems. The best place to deal with school segregation is neighborhood segregation.
Another big issue is funding education out of property taxes. That mostly screws the poor kids, ensuring they will get a lousy education and thus continue to be poor. Small, thoroughly funded schools are better than big shoddy schools -- but people usually don't want to spend the money.
Re: Thoughts
19/7/10 21:56 (UTC)If Raleigh could have genuine neighborhood schools it would be a different issue. But there's so much sprawl that everybody's going to be spending an hour a day on the bus no matter what - in that context I feel like an extra 10 or 15 minutes is an acceptable price to not have de facto segregated schools.
(no subject)
19/7/10 21:44 (UTC)Magnets were, to me, the best way of fixing that, but in my experience, most of the academic classes ended up pretty segregated anyway... Most of my classes only had a few non-white students, but at least all the students got the benefits of the magnet school's resources, which were at least equal to and in some cases better than the non-magnet schools in the middle to upper income neighborhoods.
(no subject)
19/7/10 22:35 (UTC)(no subject)
19/7/10 23:26 (UTC)As for the comment about building neighborhoods, I think you are spot on. I hate what American suburbs (speaking very broadly and overgeneralizing) have become, so reliant on cars, so disconnected from any real sense of neighborhood unity or community. I grew up in the same house my entire childhood, and I never knew half the neighbors at all.
(no subject)
20/7/10 15:14 (UTC)(no subject)
20/7/10 22:24 (UTC)Rather, I was just trying to show my support and agreement for your comments about what suburban society is like in the US...
(no subject)
21/7/10 17:00 (UTC)What I have noticed in working with kids is that you don't get a big window of opportunity before they can get turned off schooling entirely. There is a light in their eyes that starts going out maybe around 3rd or 4th grade. And nobody should be tracking students into separate classes based on their test performance that early, no way. In a classroom where everybody comes from a low-income household, you're going to see less parental involvement (not to blame the parents, but they probably have less free time), more unaddressed behavioral issues, they might need more individual attention than the kids who are getting drilled on flash cards at home -- that's when kids start being failed by the system. So that's the kind of situation where I believe busing can make a difference, just so you don't have a few schools getting hit with the biggest problems. We get segregation by classroom because by middle school or high school a lot of damage has already been done -- so we need to do more, and EARLIER, but that doesn't mean it's failed.