NITPICK: I have a vivid and difficult-to-suppress memory of witnessing a great Dane consuming his own diarrhea once on the Strand in Hermosa Beach, California.
The above is offered as an anecdote to suggest that your neighbor’s dog perhaps didn’t actually LEAVE it.
I’m totally sure that this perception of quality is in no way influenced heavily by the relative diversity of public schools.
Just like I’m totally sure that private schools aren’t by and large overwhelmingly white.
Just like I’m totally sure this is why you see this drive for private education is surely higher in affluent suburbs than within cities themselves, and that those suburbs must be more racially diverse than the urban cores, and that very diversity is what drives these affluent minorities in a ‘flight’ so to speak out to the 'burbs.
Yup. Sure about all those things.
Call it a dog-opera instead of a dog-whistle if you want. Works out the same in the end.
FWIW, I remember many of my mostly white, middle to upper class friends in the 80s and 90s leave the local public schools for a new private high school that opened up. And it sure as hell wasn’t for quality (it wasn’t quite as good when it first opened) or religious (the denominations of the students didn’t come close to matching the school’s). Ok, I’ll come right out and say it - most of them straight up said their families didn’t want them going to school with a bunch of black people. Not coincidentally, they’re all solid school voucher supporters.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court rules against the trump administration, in favor of the DACA “Dreamers” program. This is encouraging: first SCOTUS ruled against the trump admin in favor of LGBTQ rights, and now this. It looks like SCOTUS will not be a rubber stamp for trumpian policies.
Caveat: SCOTUS ruled against the way the trump admin tried to go about shutting down DACA, not the legality of its existence. So the trump admin could try to go about shutting it down another way, potentially.
Awesome, Solost — thanks.
See you all on the other side! I feel like I’m entering the portal in Being John Malkovich… let’s hope the new place is nicer than the New Jersey Turnpike…
When I went to parochial high school in 1965-1969, it was seen as a refuge from the chaos in the public schools. The neighborhood was Italian and Irish, as was about 90% of the student body. We had a smattering of Puerto Rican students who came up on the subway from the South Bronx. We had only one or two black students in each year. (There were none in my year. We had one but the first day of freshman year he was so scared that he threw up and we never saw him again.:()
It was originally intended as a backdoor way to funnel government money to conservative Christian groups. The Republicans can’t directly hand these groups government money. But the groups can set up private schools and the Republicans can set up a program that gives people vouchers to give government money to private schools. The voucher program was never really about education; it was about paying off political supporters.