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Nikita Bush's career as a public school teacher came to an end when she faced the decision of how to educate her own children. Having been told for years that American public schools would eventually get better for black children, the number of African-American homeschooling parents like Ms. Bush has doubled in little over a decade.
As Patrick Jonsson of the Christian Science monitor reports, studies show all kinds of public school problems disproportionately affect black children, and many parents have decided to take matters into their own hands. Even single parents are forming co-ops to make it possible to educate their children together outside of the public school system.
What do you do when you feel the system is failing your child and their education?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday August 22 2016, @09:01AM
This has nothing to do with race, except that black kids tend to live where the worst schools are. US public schools generally suck; they sucked when I was in them 40 years ago, and they apparently suck worse today. If you care about your children's education, you either send them to private school, or you home school. The fact that they suck worse in the inner cities, well, that's part of a larger issue.
Home schooling comes with lots of potential problems, but many of these are alleviated by getting into a coop. It spreads the load, a good coop will have parents with a variety of competencies, and it addresses the (entirely valid) concern about socialization.
Back to the articles assertion of racism: "She has seen instances where middle-class black parents, whose extra social capital would normally enable them to advocate effectively for their children, have a harder time “unlocking those benefits” than most other folks. “You know, trying to get their children into the gifted programs, all kind of things like that – because when you’re not white all those things are challenging, I think, because of all the assumptions that are made,” she says."
Somehow I have trouble believing that. From my (admittedly dated) knowledge of US public schools, there are two problems here: (1) Very few resources are devoted to programs for the gifted students (schools put more effort into educating the bottom 10% than the top 10%), and (2) too many parents are certain that their snowflake is gifted.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @09:11AM
Kids don't need to socialize these days, because by the time they grow up, everyone will have Facebook permanently implanted in their skulls. Facebook will decide who you will talk to and when, and you won't need to know anything about obsolete social graces, and you won't need to tolerate people who disagree with your views, because Facebook will make sure you only talk to people who are like you and who share your views. And if you're black, Facebook will make damn sure you never have to see a white face in your life.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Monday August 22 2016, @10:33AM
This has nothing to do with race, except that black kids tend to live where the worst schools are.
If only it were that easy to disentangle race from other socio-economic factors. I mean, I fully agree with you that improving schools in poor areas for everyone is the best general policy (and selectively solving the problem for selected groups when white male kids ain't exactly topping the school performance league is just storing up worse problems), but that's very easy to say, very difficult to do. Ultimately, you're trying to change society, and race is very much part of society. If a poor area is 95% black, and the nearby affluent area 95% white you're not going to get far telling the inhabitants on either side of the tracks that it's "nothing to do with race" (but you do have to remember that the 5% on the poor side probably don't have places reserved at Harvard, either and, if left disaffected, are fertile ground for racism).
Wouldn't it be nice if the world was a simple place with neat solutions to everything?
Somehow I have trouble believing that.
Really? The problem with anecdotal evidence is not that the anecdotes aren't true, it is that they may not be representative. I have no more difficultly believing that school district A discriminates against black kids in its gifted program than I have believing that school district B is "positively" discriminating for black kids, while district C would be over the moon if any black kids would even apply to their program. I'll also bet you the internet that the documentation for all of those gifted programs has 3 paragraphs on "equity and diversity" for every paragraph on what the program actually does. Words are easy. It only takes a few people out there at the coal face with their heads stuck in the 1950s to derail everything, and you won't weed them out with a 2-hour "diversity awareness" workshop (which will probably just entrench their views).
The problem is that we are plagued with dogmatic narrative-following and adversarial language on both sides of the argument, and no practical & pragmatic action can ever be perfect enough satisfy both camps.
...and remember, correlation is neither proof nor disproof of causation, "evidence" may not be the plural of "anecdote" but "anecdote" is not a synonym for "lie".
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 22 2016, @01:33PM
It depends a lot on where you live.
Where I was growing up, while the public schools definitely had their problems, my public high school was doing a much better job than their private counterparts by any reasonable measurement, including college admission, AP credit, vocational training, and English language training for recent refugees (mostly from Iraq and Bosnia back when I was attending). There are also public school systems that routinely send something like 20% of their graduating class to Ivy League schools. And public exam and magnet schools like Stuyvesant (in New York City) and Boston Latin that also do a top-notch job.
In other areas, the public schools absolutely do suck and are barely managing to approximately reach the state- and federally-mandated minimums, with the dropout rates and failure rates and suspension numbers to prove it.
Private schools have even more variation in quality: The top prep schools can afford to get the best teachers in the country (frequently with doctorates in their field), while the worst private schools are able to skimp on everything because they have much lower legal standards to meet.
It's basically impossible to make a useful blanket judgment as to the quality of public versus private schools, because every single local district and most private schools are under completely separate management.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @03:13PM
This has nothing to do with race, except that black kids tend to live where the worst schools are.
....so it has a lot to do with race, then.
(Score: 1) by fraxinus-tree on Monday August 22 2016, @03:24PM
Schools generally suck these days, it is not only US and it is not only publicly-funded ones. At least, the picture here in post-soviet Bulgaria is not better. The school is a complex balance of education, indoctrination and socialization (and other things). The balance is long ago destroyed and it manifests by less and less correlation between education and quality of life. Well, Finland or Japan may be different, but they are just exceptions.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Monday August 22 2016, @04:50PM
This has nothing to do with race, except that black kids tend to live where the worst schools are.
What evidence would be necessary to persuade you that the correlation between race and situation is not coincidental?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @05:34PM
I don't think bradley13's gone down the latest rabbit hole, but I just wanted to be inb4 "evolution doesn't stop below the neck."
Found this interesting website [arguman.org] making sure I had that catchphrase correct. I see what they're trying to do there [arguman.org]. Maybe Soylent needs something like that?