4 ms·

> urban liberals are incredibly hostile to the idea of allowing school boundaries to be drawn along socioeconomic lines. In cased you missed it, segregation is

by mhurron 13y ago

> urban liberals are incredibly hostile to the idea of allowing school boundaries to be drawn along socioeconomic lines. In cased you missed it, segregation is bad. It was bad 50 years ago and it is bad now. Parents that are trying to bring it back under they guise of 'think of the children' absolutely should be smacked down.

rayiner 13y ago
Our "integrationist" school policies don't remedy segregation, they create more of it. When you tell middle class parents that their only public school options in the city involve schools where 90% of kids are low-income, they just opt out of the public school system, send their kids to private schools, or move to the suburbs. That's the story of the last 30-40 years in American cities. One way or the other, middle class people will send their kids to schools with the kids of other middle class people. The question is whether those schools will be in suburbia, or will be allowed to exist in the cities. It's almost certainly better for everyone involved if they're allowed to exist in the cities.
- mhurron 13y ago
  > middle class people will send their kids to schools with the kids of other middle class people. So clearly we should enshrine it in law. We better make sure that middle class kids never see anyone less fortunate then themselves. I don't see that the mobility of the middle class is as easy as you paint it.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're saying it's better for middle class families to just head out to the suburbs, where their kids will really be assured of never having to interact with poor people as human beings, than for them to live in the same city and pay into the same tax base while allowing wealthier neighborhoods to have their own local schools. At least if middle class families live in the city, there is some hope of gradual integration. Through measures like Section 8, which often pays for low-income families to live in nicer neighborhoods, urban schools in wealthier areas can be 10-20% low-income. Parents will tolerate that. It's the 80-90% low-income schools, which make up the vast majority of urban schools, that they won't tolerate.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      > You're saying it's better for middle class families to just head out to the suburbs No I'm not. People will move (if they can or want to) for many reasons. That is not a reason to make sure you never deal with 'the undesirables' just because one of those reasons is the parents bigotry. > At least if middle class families live in the city, there is some hope of gradual integration. History disagrees with you.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        "Bigotry" is not sending your kids to a school because it has some low income students. Not sending your kids to a school that's 80-90% low-income is a rational choice. See: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cps-alternatives-suburbs-magnet-selective-enrollment-lowincome/Content?oid=11046489 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cps-alternatives-suburb... ("On the Program for International Student Assessment in 2009, U.S. schools with small proportions of low-income students did as well as schools anywhere in the world—while American schools whose enrollments were more than 75 percent low-income scored like schools in developing countries.", "Most important, many studies have also highlighted the importance of 'peer effects' in schools. They've shown that kids benefit from classmates whose parents have stimulated them cognitively from an early age, and who have helped them develop self-control and other social skills—the kind of parenting more common in middle-class homes than in poor homes."). But you're totally right. Parental education, parental economic circumstances, the prevalence of two-parent households, etc, those aren't the important things when it comes to education. What really matters is that "every student in America ha[s] the same funding." That's why Chicago Public Schools and Fairfax County Public Schools both spend about $13,000/year per pupil, and have almost identical results to show for it...
  - jerf 13y ago
    You're describing what you think should be; rayiner is describing what is. The two often have rather less correlation or causation than you might like. Sarcasm certainly has very little power to change what is. Personally, call me an engineer, but step one is always identify the problem. If you think this is a modern-day form of segregation, you need to let yourself admit it is happening, and thereby identify the problem. Getting angry at people pointing it out and refusing to believe it is merely a way of guaranteeing you'll have no impact. Skipping over step one does not make problems go away. (Or you could prove rayiner wrong. I suspect that's not really a feasible road here. Social policies are inevitably clumsy things aimed at thousands or millions; motivated individuals can often dodge around them quite well, and in this case, they are quite motivated.)
    - mhurron 13y ago
      > You're describing what you think should be; rayiner is describing what is. Certainly you can see the problem with then cementing in law or policy what is just because it is. > step one is always identify the problem Step two is not write policy so there no longer is a problem.
Domenic_S 13y ago
My mom grew up in Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley, in the days of "bussing". Surprise surprise, dumping a bunch of kids of different backgrounds, classes, and races together in the same school doesn't magically make them friends. They segregated themselves.
- mhurron 13y ago
  > They segregated themselves Not a reason to instigate such as policy. Bussing has other problems anyway, usually that being very bad for the health and performance of the children being bussed.

by mhurron 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

Our "integrationist" school policies don't remedy segregation, they create more of it. When you tell middle class parents that their only public school options in the city involve schools where 90% of kids are low-income, they just opt out of the public school system, send their kids to private schools, or move to the suburbs. That's the story of the last 30-40 years in American cities. One way or the other, middle class people will send their kids to schools with the kids of other middle class people. The question is whether those schools will be in suburbia, or will be allowed to exist in the cities. It's almost certainly better for everyone involved if they're allowed to exist in the cities.

mhurron 13y ago
> middle class people will send their kids to schools with the kids of other middle class people. So clearly we should enshrine it in law. We better make sure that middle class kids never see anyone less fortunate then themselves. I don't see that the mobility of the middle class is as easy as you paint it.
- rayiner 13y ago
  It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're saying it's better for middle class families to just head out to the suburbs, where their kids will really be assured of never having to interact with poor people as human beings, than for them to live in the same city and pay into the same tax base while allowing wealthier neighborhoods to have their own local schools. At least if middle class families live in the city, there is some hope of gradual integration. Through measures like Section 8, which often pays for low-income families to live in nicer neighborhoods, urban schools in wealthier areas can be 10-20% low-income. Parents will tolerate that. It's the 80-90% low-income schools, which make up the vast majority of urban schools, that they won't tolerate.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    > You're saying it's better for middle class families to just head out to the suburbs No I'm not. People will move (if they can or want to) for many reasons. That is not a reason to make sure you never deal with 'the undesirables' just because one of those reasons is the parents bigotry. > At least if middle class families live in the city, there is some hope of gradual integration. History disagrees with you.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      "Bigotry" is not sending your kids to a school because it has some low income students. Not sending your kids to a school that's 80-90% low-income is a rational choice. See: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cps-alternatives-suburbs-magnet-selective-enrollment-lowincome/Content?oid=11046489 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cps-alternatives-suburb... ("On the Program for International Student Assessment in 2009, U.S. schools with small proportions of low-income students did as well as schools anywhere in the world—while American schools whose enrollments were more than 75 percent low-income scored like schools in developing countries.", "Most important, many studies have also highlighted the importance of 'peer effects' in schools. They've shown that kids benefit from classmates whose parents have stimulated them cognitively from an early age, and who have helped them develop self-control and other social skills—the kind of parenting more common in middle-class homes than in poor homes."). But you're totally right. Parental education, parental economic circumstances, the prevalence of two-parent households, etc, those aren't the important things when it comes to education. What really matters is that "every student in America ha[s] the same funding." That's why Chicago Public Schools and Fairfax County Public Schools both spend about $13,000/year per pupil, and have almost identical results to show for it...
- jerf 13y ago
  You're describing what you think should be; rayiner is describing what is. The two often have rather less correlation or causation than you might like. Sarcasm certainly has very little power to change what is. Personally, call me an engineer, but step one is always identify the problem. If you think this is a modern-day form of segregation, you need to let yourself admit it is happening, and thereby identify the problem. Getting angry at people pointing it out and refusing to believe it is merely a way of guaranteeing you'll have no impact. Skipping over step one does not make problems go away. (Or you could prove rayiner wrong. I suspect that's not really a feasible road here. Social policies are inevitably clumsy things aimed at thousands or millions; motivated individuals can often dodge around them quite well, and in this case, they are quite motivated.)
  - mhurron 13y ago
    > You're describing what you think should be; rayiner is describing what is. Certainly you can see the problem with then cementing in law or policy what is just because it is. > step one is always identify the problem Step two is not write policy so there no longer is a problem.

Domenic_S 13y ago

My mom grew up in Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley, in the days of "bussing". Surprise surprise, dumping a bunch of kids of different backgrounds, classes, and races together in the same school doesn't magically make them friends. They segregated themselves.

mhurron 13y ago
> They segregated themselves Not a reason to instigate such as policy. Bussing has other problems anyway, usually that being very bad for the health and performance of the children being bussed.