The good: Minneapolis Public Schools want to decrease total suspensions for non-violent infractions of school rules.I wonder what happens to Asians. In educational issues that particular minority group is often lumped in with whites because they "succeed". The message, then, is that only "minorities" don't succeed. Good message!
The bad: The district has pledged to do this by implementing a special review system for cases where a black or Latino student is disciplined. Only minority students will enjoy this special privilege...
Why don't certain groups of kids succeed? I've said it about a zillion times on this blog--culture. And culture is not merely a racial construct.
6 comments:
Yeah, but that one word analysis doesn't really tell you much and it ignores some facts to the contrary.
Blacks are both more supportive of education alternatives by a wide margin then whites and more aware of education alternatives. Kind of runs counter to that "culture" argument since, if education didn't matter to the people on the wrong side of the racial divide, why would the be more knowledgeable and more supportive of one means by which education's being done?
Related is the avidity with which blacks seek out those alternatives. Charter schools have unrepresentatively high levels of black and poor kids. A culture indifferent to education should show the opposite. This "cultural" indifference to education seems to manifest itself most strongly in lousy schools which suggests there's more to the situation then indifference/hostility to education.
I restate the final sentence of this post, that culture is not merely a RACIAL construct.
allen, the problem with your argument is this: anyone who opts out of a public school to go to a private or charter school is likely to do better --not necessarily because the school itself is better, but because they have demonstrated confer about the importance of education. It's a biased sample, and of course they will do better … regardless of race.
I swear … I hate autocorrect more than anything. I don't even recognize my last post. I meant to say, 'they have demonstrated their belief in the importance of education' … the rest of that, that was unintelligible? Your guess is as good as mine.
In the Detroit area that "biased" sample is over 50% now and continuing to head upwards.
At what point does it become overwhelmingly obvious that the percentage of parents who don't care about educating their kids is vanishingly small and the on-going effort to inflate that percentage is unfounded where it isn't self-serving?
If it's rising, that's a good thing. But charters are not the answer … a full voucher system is. That would force everyone to buy in, some how.
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