I looked further and instructional spending per student at our school is 5,016. The other schools it is 6,091, 6,087, and 7,635. Our district is spending less on direct instruction per student, yet the area belief is that we are the rich school and do so well due to all the money we spend. These numbers don’t pan out with that image. There is often an uproar in the area about how much money we have. Little mention is made of the fact we have approx. 13% state funding compared to these other schools getting 50% or more.
http://webportal.ousd.k12.ca.us/sarc/docs/sarc05-06/html/Oakland%20TECH%2005-06%20SARC.htm
Take a look through here. Even at the school you pointed out as the “oppressed” one, the test scores for white (non hispanic) students are way higher than their black counterparts in the same school. I’m sure there is some cultural phenomenon at work here just not what you seem to be implying.
I always assumed schools were like businesses in that some were well run, others are disaster areas, and that its more about quality of management teams than the ability of a given student.
Does “not trashing the place” count as doing something?
Regards,
Shodan
I have to disagree with you…the point of this protest is that they get less money. Otherwise, what’s the point of complaining to the people at New Trier? The sad thing about what Meeks is proposing is that he’s not addressing the actual problems. There is plenty they could do about the fact that their schools suck. If they would put energy into caring about what happens in their own school rather than what goes on elsewhere, they could make vast improvments.
Here’s a thought: how about looking inward to their own community? They’re always talking about community and all. How about calling police and doing their part as citizens of the community to make things safer and more pleasant. Imo, this shit starts at home. They could actually try being actual leaders and parents to their children, rather than blowhards like Meeks and his kind. The only thing missing from making this a true debacle is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. (I suppose Jesse is busy trying to keep an appointment with Obama’s nutsack.) I pray that the community does not follow through with this plan. By not participating, that will be the strongest message that they can send. No good will come of this, otherwise.
It really comes down to priorities. A defining moment for me was in Evanston. I attended ALL the school curriculum and teacher meetings. It was always a quiet time with a small group of the same parents discussing what was being taught, what needed to be done, etc.
Then there was the talent show. Hundreds and hundreds of screaming relatives but what I remember most was the two dads behind me talking about the school and saying this was the first time they had ever set foot in it and that they would see each other at graduation.
None of this changes the fact that kids don’t get to choose if their parents are cracked out losers, immigrants who don’t quite “get it”, or just generally absent. A lot of what goes on is in the home, and there is only so much that can be done about that.
Some people have great priorities- making sure mom hides her drugs out of reach of the young ones, cooking dinner, cleaning up after dad’s drunken friends trash the place.
But what I’m most concerned with is that bright, hardworking kid. That kid who gets straight A’s. Who worked hard and beat the odds all her life. And yet she’s headed to the nearest junior college because her high school offered one honors course to every other high school’s 6. This sucks. And she knows it. And it’s all because her parents live five minutes in one direction and not the other.
Of course there are other factors at work.
But I’ve seen a straight A student put in remedial classes year after year because his last name was “Martinez.” I’ve known of schools that lose their accreditation because they have a separate lunchroom for their “free lunch” students- who happen to be the only minorities in the school. I’ve seen school districts split across very obvious racial lines…and you can guess who loses. I’ve been in a district where the white school’s “problem kid” section was moved to the diverse school despite great distances.
Kids aren’t stupid. They see this stuff going on, and it doesn’t exactly inspire them to believe that any of these people are looking out for them. How are you going to invest yourself in a system that has showed over and over again that it really doesn’t give a fuck about you no matter how hard working you are?
That’s why we have magnet schools here…a kid like that doesn’t have to go to her local school here, she can test into another one where they are college-prep oriented.
I’m not denying that all of those things are unfair and need to be addressed, but again, how is storming a rich suburb’s high school going to solve any of it? The whole point of this protest is to highlight funding inequities. None of the problems in the Chicago Public Schools have any relevance whatsoever to what goes on in Winnetka, because it’s a different district. The kinds of inequities you are talking about could be addressed regardless of anything they do at New Trier. And the worst part is, Meeks knows it…he’s doing nothing here but grandstanding.
I guess the "not an easy commute’ bit does change things a bit. Gross inequalities of nearby schools WHEN the divisions are quite obviously along racial lines is something I feel perhaps a bit too personally invested.
But I agree this particular protest was not the best way to bring light to the problem and seek positive change.
Damn straight it’s grandstanding. And yes, some of the funding inequality issue is about race, and yes, it should be addressed - but so should the other issues that keep kids from reaching their full intellectual potential.
But if it’s ostensibly all about funding inequality, then why isn’t he sending the kids to Evanston, which a) can be reached easily via public transportation from Chicago, and b) spends almost as much per student as New Trier?
Because Evanston is almost half-minority, so the TV visuals won’t be as self-serving to Meeks’ cause, that’s why.
Not to diminish Marty’s accomplishment, but even our dimmer Dopers could probably get all A’s in remedial classes. Hell, I bet even >I< could…
(Incidentally, I find your claim very, very hard to believe on its face. A stellar student with, one can only presume, a flawless command of English, permanently relegated to the shortbus simply because of a Latino surname? Unlikely.)
I would guess that there are lots of economic factors that may effectively make your school richer.
People already mentioned the fact that poor schools have to spend money on security guards and metal detectors, but there’s lots more. Poor schools spend money on buses, while students at richer ones tend to have cars or parents who can drive them. Poor schools usually can’t afford much in the way of field trips, while richer ones have plenty of volunteers, and are often located closer to areas of interest. Richer schools can raise more money in fundraisers. They get better teachers for the same money (because the teachers want to work there), etc.
One of my favorite teachers in high school (not for this reason, though) used to bring doughnuts for her students every Friday morning. It probably cost her a few hundred dollars every year, out of her own pocket. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s just an example of the sort of perk that you get at a “rich” school, while the poorer schools are spending money on security guards. A little something like that goes a long way towards making the students feel that they are valued members of the school and not just prisoners of public education.
I’m not so sure about that…my college roomie was Salvadoran, and even though she was a straight-A student in high school despite not having arrived in the U.S. until a couple of years before starting high school (and with zero ENglish once she arrived), her high school counselor basically wouldn’t discuss college choices with her other than the local community college. Even when she asked, repeatedly. She and her parents had to argue to get into honors classes, even when her grades justified it (once her English was more up to snuff).
She ended up with a nearly full-tuition scholarship to NYU, where she graduated with a B+ average, no thanks to her high schhol. But that was because she got tons of encouragement at home, and elsewhere.
Perhaps I am wrong, and owe an apology to even sven, but it just seems to defy logic. What’s the point? Wouldn’t a school have an active interest in promoting the advancement of minority students who demonstrate above-average abilities, rather than confining them to some educational ghetto?
An excellent point. That’s the thing that makes me so mad about this kind of thing. Meeks claims that he’s all riled up about funding inequities, but that’s not really what’s going on here. I mean, it’s part of it, but there’s a whole subtext going on, as well. He knows the funding at New Trier isn’t the problem, but he’s not going to take a Bill Cosby stance and blame these folks who actually live in the neighborhood, not in a million years. He’s not going to show you a diverse suburb or neighborhood where the schools don’t have problems to blame on racism. The thing that irks me more than anything is that he’s not doing anything that will actually help these kids, and he knows it.
In theory, yes, you’d think the school would just want its students to do well.
In practice, some school staff just don’t want to be bothered with doing the extra work that it would take for that to happen.
I’ve seen it. Less often “stellar” students–the 10% or so of kids that really burn with the need for education tend to get noticed, especially if they are charismatic–but very bright minority or poor kids, who could easily handle advanced work, often have to ask their counselors to put them into the advanced courses, whereas less capable middle class white kids have to be asked to not be in the honors courses. If you are first generation and don’t really know what the difference is and no one suggests it to you, you don’t know to pursue it.
I know I’ve said this on the board before, but all the funding numbers quoted ignore the “soft money” that goes into a school with an active parent group. Everything nice at our school comes from parent donations, and I am not talking about small change–I am talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. We have a quarter million dollar track and field complex, a fully stocked weight room, air conditioned gyms (in Texas!) only because of parents. Our prom is affordable because of parent subsidizes that knock off half the ticket price for everyone. We have a nice musical because parents build the set and sew the costumes (with their own tools). We have a newspaper and a yearbook and a literary magazine because of parent donations. Parents painted our front office, furnished our teacher’s lounge, and make the homecoming mums each year so that anyone can afford them. Parents also donate money in very small places, quietly paying for less fortunate kids to take AP exams, go on trips, participate in sports or choir or band camp, etc.
PTA’s aren’t about bake sales and carwashes. We are talking about serious money and no one is counting it.
Because the counselors don’t think they exist–they know what an honors kid “looks like”, and it isn’t a scruffy minority kid who stares at the ground all the time. To be fair, I think class plays a larger role in this than race: I’ve seen plenty of middle-class minority kids get automatically shuffled to the honors track and I’ve seen plenty of clearly trashy white kids get shuffled to regular classes. Black, white, or hispanic, if your mom’s a crack whore (and I mean that literally), no one thinks you have a future.
Teachers, sadly, often do not push the most able kids out of their regular/remedial classes because those are their best, most able students.
I’m guessing at least 90% of the problems of schools would go away if students got tons of encouragement at home, and elsewhere, even if funding didn’t change at all.
Regards,
Shodan
Or sometimes even if your mom’s “just” a hairdresser. Never mind that she never went to college because she had her first kid at 19, because that’s the cultural norm where she grew up. And oh, yeah, there was that pesky civil war that was going on at the time.
Just because someone doesn’t go to college, it doesn’t mean that she’s stupid.