7 ms·

McAuliffe Plan: Giving Parents a ‘Choice’ Leads to ‘Segregation’

16 points by chuckee 5y ago

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Assume that's right - that letting parents choose what school their children attend (by choosing where they move) leads to more segregated schools. Therefore... what? You can't let parents choose because they might choose wrongly? If that's your position, how do you feel about the exact same logic being applied to abortion? And if you don't like how that would work out on abortion, maybe it's not good logic here? The US left sure seems willing to be authoritarian in order to achieve the social ends that they want...
- patentatt 5y ago
  Just in case you don’t know the leftist response to this, let me take a crack at it. It’s not that people would choose ‘wrongly,’ it’s that only some people would be able to exercise the ‘choice,’ leaving those who are unable to behind. And while I think the classism of this is bad enough in itself, it just so happens that the division between the haves and the have-nots largely align along racial lines in the US. And just in case it’s not obvious, the reason why this matters in respect to public education is that all children deserve opportunity regardless of where they were born or who they were born to.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    > the division between the haves and the have-nots largely align along racial lines There are twice as many white people in poverty than black people in poverty, even if the rate of poverty is twice as large in the black population compared to the white population. More than 80% of people of either race are not in poverty. Substituting race for poverty is such an intellectually stunted move. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-ra...
    - patentatt 5y ago
      Why do absolute numbers matter more than rates/ratios? Also I didn’t substitute race for poverty, in fact I never mentioned poverty in my comment. And for what’s it’s worth, I think it’s ‘intellectually stunted’ to hide your racism behind libertarian concepts that on their surface you think sound smart.
      - angelzen 5y ago
        haves (rich) and have-nots (poor) ? Sorry, perhaps you meant something else?
teawrecks 5y ago
The article's focus on "parent choice" seems like a red herring to me. Bussing isn't any more about parent choice today than it was in the 70s. Though I'm sure one could easily find anti-civil rights publications from back then trying to make that same appeal to tradition. The fact is that integration never really happened in the US. The powers that be used arguments like "parental choice" to stymie progress, and we ended up in a good-enough middle ground where the privileged class could pretend something was done, and racism was over. Meanwhile school funding remains directly tied to standardized test scores, creating virtuous/vicious cycles of classism in virtually every city across the country. The point of establishing public schools was to break the cycle of only the rich being able to afford a good education. IMO the fact that there is such a thing as good/bad public schools means the system has failed. I'm totally in favor of bussing as much as I am the use of online tools like KhanAcademy and subsidized child care.
- chuckee 5y ago
  > Meanwhile school funding remains directly tied to standardized test scores, creating virtuous/vicious cycles of classism in virtually every city across the country. Unequal school funding is a common talking point, but, on average, the spending per White/Black/Hispanic/Asian pupil is nearly identical. Black pupils receive 105% as much funding as White, or 101% if adjusted to cost of living in the school district [1]. For those wondering how this is possible, when school funding is tied to property taxes in the district: It's because roughly half of school funding comes from state budgets, and is allocated based on necessity, so school that receive less district funding, get more state funding. [1] https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-disparities-public-school-funding https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-di...
  - teawrecks 5y ago
    That article and entire website are the epitome of, "the powers that be used arguments like 'parental choice' to stymie progress, and we ended up in a good-enough middle ground where the privileged class could pretend something was done, and racism was over." I'm not going to convince you of anything, I know, but you're not going to convince anyone with decade old articles from a conservative think tank propaganda site.
angelzen 5y ago
He is not wrong. The cumulative effect of small ingroup preferences is segregation, see this little cute simulation https://ncase.me/polygons https://ncase.me/polygons. To enforce desegregation you need to either suspend freedom even for small choices, or reeducate your subjects to exhibit unnaturally large outgroup preference.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  When the solutions to a problem are either suspending freedom or "re-education", I think you really need to stop and consider what's really the lesser of the evils.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    If only there were a country that went full on reeducation. "The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy, muscular, and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist Revolution. Adherence to Marxism–Leninism, and individual behavior consistent with that philosophy's prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man, which required intellectualism and hard discipline.[6] He was not driven by crude impulses of nature but by conscious self-mastery, a belief that required the rejection of both innate personality and the unconscious, which Soviet psychologists therefore rejected.[7] He treated public property with respect, as if it were his own.[8] He also has lost any nationalist sentiments, being Soviet rather than Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, or any of the many other nationalities found in the USSR.[9] His work required exertion and austerity, to show the new man triumphing over his base instincts.[10] Alexey Stakhanov's spurious[11][12] record-breaking day in mining coal caused him to be set forth as the exemplar of the "new man" and the members of Stakhanovite movements tried to become Stakhanovites.[13]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man

16 points by chuckee 5y ago

Assume that's right - that letting parents choose what school their children attend (by choosing where they move) leads to more segregated schools. Therefore... what? You can't let parents choose because they might choose wrongly? If that's your position, how do you feel about the exact same logic being applied to abortion? And if you don't like how that would work out on abortion, maybe it's not good logic here? The US left sure seems willing to be authoritarian in order to achieve the social ends that they want...

patentatt 5y ago
Just in case you don’t know the leftist response to this, let me take a crack at it. It’s not that people would choose ‘wrongly,’ it’s that only some people would be able to exercise the ‘choice,’ leaving those who are unable to behind. And while I think the classism of this is bad enough in itself, it just so happens that the division between the haves and the have-nots largely align along racial lines in the US. And just in case it’s not obvious, the reason why this matters in respect to public education is that all children deserve opportunity regardless of where they were born or who they were born to.
- angelzen 5y ago
  > the division between the haves and the have-nots largely align along racial lines There are twice as many white people in poverty than black people in poverty, even if the rate of poverty is twice as large in the black population compared to the white population. More than 80% of people of either race are not in poverty. Substituting race for poverty is such an intellectually stunted move. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-ra...
  - patentatt 5y ago
    Why do absolute numbers matter more than rates/ratios? Also I didn’t substitute race for poverty, in fact I never mentioned poverty in my comment. And for what’s it’s worth, I think it’s ‘intellectually stunted’ to hide your racism behind libertarian concepts that on their surface you think sound smart.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      haves (rich) and have-nots (poor) ? Sorry, perhaps you meant something else?

teawrecks 5y ago

The article's focus on "parent choice" seems like a red herring to me. Bussing isn't any more about parent choice today than it was in the 70s. Though I'm sure one could easily find anti-civil rights publications from back then trying to make that same appeal to tradition. The fact is that integration never really happened in the US. The powers that be used arguments like "parental choice" to stymie progress, and we ended up in a good-enough middle ground where the privileged class could pretend something was done, and racism was over. Meanwhile school funding remains directly tied to standardized test scores, creating virtuous/vicious cycles of classism in virtually every city across the country. The point of establishing public schools was to break the cycle of only the rich being able to afford a good education. IMO the fact that there is such a thing as good/bad public schools means the system has failed. I'm totally in favor of bussing as much as I am the use of online tools like KhanAcademy and subsidized child care.

chuckee 5y ago
> Meanwhile school funding remains directly tied to standardized test scores, creating virtuous/vicious cycles of classism in virtually every city across the country. Unequal school funding is a common talking point, but, on average, the spending per White/Black/Hispanic/Asian pupil is nearly identical. Black pupils receive 105% as much funding as White, or 101% if adjusted to cost of living in the school district [1]. For those wondering how this is possible, when school funding is tied to property taxes in the district: It's because roughly half of school funding comes from state budgets, and is allocated based on necessity, so school that receive less district funding, get more state funding. [1] https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-disparities-public-school-funding https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-di...
- teawrecks 5y ago
  That article and entire website are the epitome of, "the powers that be used arguments like 'parental choice' to stymie progress, and we ended up in a good-enough middle ground where the privileged class could pretend something was done, and racism was over." I'm not going to convince you of anything, I know, but you're not going to convince anyone with decade old articles from a conservative think tank propaganda site.

angelzen 5y ago

He is not wrong. The cumulative effect of small ingroup preferences is segregation, see this little cute simulation https://ncase.me/polygons https://ncase.me/polygons. To enforce desegregation you need to either suspend freedom even for small choices, or reeducate your subjects to exhibit unnaturally large outgroup preference.

josephcsible 5y ago
When the solutions to a problem are either suspending freedom or "re-education", I think you really need to stop and consider what's really the lesser of the evils.
- angelzen 5y ago
  If only there were a country that went full on reeducation. "The Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy, muscular, and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist Revolution. Adherence to Marxism–Leninism, and individual behavior consistent with that philosophy's prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the New Soviet man, which required intellectualism and hard discipline.[6] He was not driven by crude impulses of nature but by conscious self-mastery, a belief that required the rejection of both innate personality and the unconscious, which Soviet psychologists therefore rejected.[7] He treated public property with respect, as if it were his own.[8] He also has lost any nationalist sentiments, being Soviet rather than Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, or any of the many other nationalities found in the USSR.[9] His work required exertion and austerity, to show the new man triumphing over his base instincts.[10] Alexey Stakhanov's spurious[11][12] record-breaking day in mining coal caused him to be set forth as the exemplar of the "new man" and the members of Stakhanovite movements tried to become Stakhanovites.[13]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man