I 100% disagree with this. It should be their responsibility, along with the responsibility of every other citizen of the country, to ensure that the children of the worst parents in the world have access to a good education.
I had a student a few years ago whose mom had some serious, serious problems, among which was deliberate sabotaging of her child’s education, up to and including keeping him home from school some 30 or 40 days of the school year.
That dude deserved an excellent education. If we don’t work to get one for him, we’re failing on our societal duties.
To add to that, though, often we’re not dealing with apathetic parents. A parent may not fully participate in school culture due to a variety of reasons, including:
-Being a single parent working to keep multiple kids safe and fed.
-Involvement in the criminal justice system in a way that limits their mobility or free hours (e.g., a parent who has multiple nightly court-mandated 12-step programs).
-Lack of transportation.
-Illiteracy, or low literacy.
-Anxiety around schools based on the parent’s own traumatic experiences.
-Real or perceived racist or classist attitudes from middle-class white teachers.
Those are off the top of my head.
If you’re a white middle-class parent with a college degree, you’re going to come into a school with a sense of authority, and you’re going to find that teachers are in general apt to give you respect and at least some deference. If you’re impoverished, or a high-school dropout, or not white, you may come into a school to a very different experience.
Whatever the parent’s attitude or availability or whatever, we need to be willing to give each child the best education we can.
One more factor, which maybe should be its own post but I’m putting here anyway: everything else being equal, it’s more expensive to educate kids in poverty. Kids in poverty are likelier to have identifiable disabilities, whether physical or cognitive; they are less likely to have such resources as lunch and transportation and supplies; they are likelier to need after-school or summer care. If you try to compare schools’ budgets without examining how many impoverished students are at each school, you’re not going to understand the numbers correctly.
I think **bump **is saying, and I agree with him, that the motivated parents shouldn’t be responsible to subsidize the low performing group by being forced together in the same school environment as was **Voyager’s **example he was responding to.
People may have a general responsibility through tax dollars to subsidize the education of the general population, but that is as far as I would extend the obligation. The OP of this thread is talking about a complex integration scheme. There have been other threads where people have said that the more affluent should go into underserved areas to set a good example. That’s the kind of thing that the motivated families should have no responsibility to do.
The only responsibility I have towards other kids I fulfill through my tax dollars. I see no connection between the responsibility that society has as a whole to pay for children’s’ education, and the mandate that they also be the provider of that education.
The problem, I think, is that we seem to be proposing separate schools for the children of poor/unmotivated parents and the children of wealthy/motivated parents. Do you believe such schools will be equal?
I’m not just buzz-wording it here. This proposal truly seems to be a separate-but-unequal proposal, a very deliberate one. And I think our current schools are highly segregated along economic lines, and our current schools are highly unequal.
Your children, no more than my children, are responsible for the education of poor children. But you and I are responsible for creating a society where poor children receive a strong education. If our current system is not doing that, we ned to do what it takes to change things.
Again, I think that changing things like the criminal justice system and housing inequalities are a priority. But desegregating schools along socioeconomic lines is surely a good measure as well.
Not on its face would the schools be separated, but the school population is currently made up of the people in the local geography. Some neighborhoods are more affluent than others, there is nothing that can be done to change that. I don’t think those schools would be equal, but if you are using socioeconomic status as the measure of equality, then equal schools shouldn’t be a goal.
I’m glad neighborhoods self select on income. I choose a more expensive neighborhood not because I like to pay more. I do so because I like all of the associated things that come with it - safety, professional demographics, value education and extra curricular activity, low crime, etc. And just as our neighborhoods self select on income, the schools associated with it do as well. That’s a feature, not a bug. I want my kids in a school where the population has those same values. I don’t want them in an environment where the problems you speak of nutrition, criminal justice involvement, etc. are issues that occupy the school’s focus.
What does this responsibility entail? How is it enforced or encouraged?
Well, yes: because you live in a better neighborhood. This will hardly come as a surprise :). Folks who live in public housing, in high-crime neighborhoods, in neighborhoods with worse access to public services, are likely to be less sanguine about this “self-selection” than you are.
This seems like a huge question, and I’m not sure where to start. If you want to read up on it in North Carolina, start with the Leandro Decision. If you want something more specific, can you clarify?
Just what would you propose for that kid with the dead-beat mom? How is the school (or district, or state) going to remedy the effects of such a mother?
It sucks for that kid, but my kids shouldn’t get a lesser education because that other kid’s parents fail at parenting. Why shouldn’t I move somewhere that I’m in a community of like-minded parents? Or send my kids to school at a private school with a similar community of like-minded parents? THAT is what’s going to spell success for my kids, not trying to push Sisyphus’ rock up the hill against a legion of chump parents who barely care if their kids show up, much less if they’re actually successful at school.
I read the link. Without reading the underlying opinion - it seems similar to what I’ve said in other threads on this topic - equality is not achievable, but minimum levels should be.
You said:
You use the word “responsible” here twice. When I read that, it implies a duty, and a consequence if that duty is not fulfilled. So my question is what actions do you think this responsibility mandates? I stated how far I think this responsibility goes - taxes. No further. So my question is what more would you think an individual is obligated to do to satisfy this responsibility you speak of?
If you don’t think that you live with the consequences of deeply unequal school systems, and the deep inequality that they foster…Well, you probably live in a different city than I do. The consequences of the current system are apparent to me every day.
A nation is stronger when every citizen has the opportunity to reach their full potential. Right now, the way we manage our school systems does not allow for that.
Nor, for that matter, are we stronger for playing a nationwide game of cat and mouse, by forcibly integrating rich school districts with poor districts, ruining both in the process and causing wealthy white people to flee further afield.
Yes, rich people tend to buy the best education for their kids that exists. And it tends to be better than what’s available to poor children. President Obama sends his kids to a school that costs $40,000 per year. How do you intend to stop him, and others like him, from doing that?
The idea that we can force rich people to send their kids to lousy schools, and thereby force those rich people to care about improving those schools, is a preposterous one. To improve crummy public schools, we need to change the policies that make them crummy. Fortunately ambitious reformers have been doing that in states across the country.
But why don’t kids from “broken families” (whatever that is) succeed? Maybe it’s because for at least the last forty years our educational policy has been to assume that they’re going to be failures, therefore it’s a waste of time, money and resources to give the the tools they need to succeed? That’s what I see through my city and county. When you treat kids like their educational outcome is a foregone conclusion before they even enter kindergarten, only the exceptional are going to defy the additional burden you’ve just heaped on their heads.
But simply putting money into schools with highly impoverished student populations doesn’t change student outcomes if that money isn’t being used to provide resources that will enable those specific kids. (Which will differ by school, let alone by district. In some places it would mean extra food support, in others health support, in others it’s language support, and more.) Saying “but these schools have plenty of money” is like giving someone living in a hotel room perishable food that needs to be cooked before its eaten, then refusing to understand why they’re still hungry and why the food they were given is rotting.
It should be remarkable and appalling and unspeakable that any public school could ever be labeled “lousy” to begin with. Once we’ve hit a point where that’s not even blinked at – and where people think it’s an acceptable or expectable and unfixable condition – we’ve failed as a society at one of our most basic obligations.
Technically, though, this isn’t really the case, not even most of the time. The point is well-taken, because, yes, school districts operate on a local scale. But–as bump’s post above implies–they are usually separate entities from town, city or county governments (in the South, they sometimes are part of the county government). Most districts are actually like separate governments unto themselves. Except for in Virginia, they have taxation authority, but it’s the state government that “charters” a district, usually channeling most of its funding.
City/town governments usually don’t have much say in the governance of school districts–they have their own elected school boards for that. The mayors of many cities often talk about their plans for schools when in reality they have no control over them. And Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, operates across more than 15 cities, and a lot of unincorporated areas. By the same token, some cities (in California at least) are served by more than one school district.
Change some underlying factors, to begin with. Change the criminal justice system so that his dad isn’t behind bars for a nonviolent drug offense, and so that there aren’t gang shootings in his neighborhood over drugs. Change the housing situation so he’s not living in isolated public housing with no pedestrian access to parks or business districts. These are the proposals I’ve been hammering on in this thread.
Like-minded parents sounds to me like code for socioeconomic segregation. Is this what you mean, or am I misreading you?
My first part was poorly worded. I meant that your children and my children are NOT responsible for the education of other people’s children. We adults, however, are. That responsibility includes taxes, but it also includes supporting desegregation of schools, de-emphasizing private and charter and other opt-out schools as a solution, and supporting social policies that create environments in which children can thrive.
Wait–my messiah, Obama (blessed be his name), has children in the demon-private school? MY WHOLE ARGUMENT IS RUINED!!!1!one!!!
The people running schools aren’t children who can’t decide the right way to marshal their resources. If their food is rotting, it’s entirely their fault for not dealing with it like responsible adults.
IF the problem with bad inner city schools is a lack of resources to buy equipment and hire good teachers, then giving them money IS the solution.
The reality is that the problems go much deeper than having enough money to buy SmartBoards, and textbooks, and other supplies/equipment. Children from poverty achieve less academically than wealthier children as a direct result of living in poverty. It’s not simply a result of teachers giving up on them, or their schools being underfunded, or not having access to private schools, poverty itself is more than enough to cause academic underachievement.
It isn’t enough to make the classrooms equal, my district puts all the kids, rich and poor, black and white, in the same classrooms, side by side starting at Kindergarten, and the differences in achievement are staggering, even at the 3rd grade level.
I don’t have many regrets in life, but one is that I picked my neighborhood so my kids would go to a diverse school. Socioleconomically and racially diverse. Kids from all walks of life.
Worst parenting move I ever made. Its my kids who have had to go through lockdowns that my friends’ kids in richer districts never experienced. Its my kids who are facing a 20% dropout rate - which means that “hey, I’m going to graduate, what are you on my case for.” Its my kids who have had their elementary school educations completely sidetracked into remedial Math and English to get the school up to speed enough to have the school pass NCLB education - despite both of mine testing above average. They are the ones that as long as they were passing, that was plenty good - the effort had to go to getting the other kids to pass. The school has so many kids with so many needs, that my daughters ADHD was pushed aside - they can’t afford to deal with a kid who is doing fine and just not reaching her potential. However, they did give her Speech therapy, because having her identified as a special needs that took no additional resources gave them better scores on their NCLB rankings. That lack of afford means we haven’t had adequate textbooks for all the kids, they don’t have librarians in the schools, and there are 35 kids in a kindergarten classroom.
Its far better in high school. High school has segregated the kids by ability - and turns out that means socio economic segregation. However, my son’s school habits started being set in fifth grade, with friends whose parents didn’t see college as a realistic choice or value education.
Socio economic segregation is horrible - it isolates the poorest kids in the worst schools without the support of peers who would show them the world outside poverty. And I really wish I wouldn’t have let my liberal faith in that idea keep me from doing what would have been best for my kids.
It means putting students together whose parents value education, so they don’t get dragged down by their peers.
I am not following your logic. We adults are responsible for the education of other people’s children, therefore we should de-emphasize the kinds of schools that get the best outcomes.
Although the last part, about creating environments where children thrive, is valid. Children thrive in two-parent households. Therefore we need to support social policies that encourage two-parent households, and strive to eliminate single parenthood. That has at least as much chance of happening as prison reform.
Wait–my messiah, Obama (blessed be his name), has children in the demon-private school? MY WHOLE ARGUMENT IS RUINED!!!1!one!!!
:runs from the thread sobbing
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I don’t suppose you could answer the question. What are you going to do to prevent people like Obama from sending his children to private schools, which you apparently believe happens at the expense of the other children in Washington DC?
So what is the answer? We just give up on kids? We just consign ourselves to a nation where your zip code defines if you reach your full potential or not?
We are better than that. We’ve had good schools before, and we can have them again. Countries with far fewer resources and far more problems manage to have good schools.
I wonder (and I’m just thinking out loud here, so this may end up profoundly stupid, sorry)… in other countries with a high level of income inequality, do they send all their kids to the same school? Or are there village schools for the poor kids and private schools for the rich kids?
Is our problem actually low income students faring poorer because they’re poor, or is it low income students forced into middle income pedagogy and administration that’s the problem?
Would we do better for the poor kids to actually segregate them and in doing so, create interventions that work for them (like, I dunno, flexible class times to accommodate parents who work 3 jobs, temporary boarding for kids without heat), rather than trying to get them to respond to interventions that work for rich kids and failing? Would we do better at making sure everyone is fed and has pencils if everyone in the school had the same need to be fed and have pencils, rather than just a few kids being singled out for such assistance?
I know, that’s veering dangerously into “separate but equal” territory. But did we discard “separate but equal” because it didn’t work, or because it offends our sense of right and wrong? (Of course, “separate but equal” was based on race, not income, so may not apply at all.)
I don’t think people are necessarily claiming that. What I, and some others (I think) are saying is that a parent’s first and primary duty is to their own children, above and beyond, sometimes at the expense of their own health and lives. With that in mind, it seems absurd to expect parents to be altruistic toward other people’s kids at the potential detriment of their own children.
That’s why the proposals to basically hold the educations of educated, not-bad-off children hostage in order that their parents will raise up the cruddy low-performing schools where they’d be placed, and by extension the low-performing children with shitty parents are so offensive. It’s the holding for ransom element that steams me- the idea that some asshole in the government is going to basically wreck my kids’ education if I don’t solve someone else’s problem (bad parenting, poor choices, bad luck).