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The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

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Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#92
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therein lies the problem. How? In general, bad schools suffer from a lack of funding and the political will to do something about it.

The answer is to stop funding schools locally. Until that's done, nothing we do education-wise matters.

You want the Federal government to fix the school system?

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#93
post #80
post #15

>> In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. I'm not sure if it is entirely fair to single out the education system here (once again), or at least batch it in with "yet another failing". I believe more is at fault here. Unless I'm mistaken, tax payers in a particu…

As a Canadian, I'm not entirely familiar with your education system. That being said, wouldn't schools receive funding based (at least in part) on the number of children enrolled at them? I would have thought that would have made more sense than taking a percentage out of the incomes of the residents in a community and funneling that to the school. The point I'm getting at is Ms. Williams-Bolar pays taxes. If schools…

Doesn't work that way; property taxes in the geographic region of the school district go to fund the schools in that district and nowhere else (if you ignore the effects of equalization lawsuits). If someone living in a low-tax district puts their child in a school in a high-tax district, they are free-riding. The case in Connecticut involves a mother from Bridgeport, which is a poor area, putting her daughter in school in Norwalk, which is much wealthier.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#94
post #84
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously not. The whole point of the article is that poor, intelligent children do not have any way to enroll in schools that would allow them to excel. Presumably if you lied on the income level on a scholarship application, you would have the funds to send your kid to a nice school but you wouldn't want to pay for it. Note that if you were very poor lying about your income on your scholarship application would not…

No matter how worthy the purpose, falsehood is falsehood. Is it really such good education for your children to demonstrate that lying should be used to obtain the important things in life?

Since you are purporting that falsehood is never wrong...

exodus 1:15-20 (NRSV)

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’ So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.

tl;dr : The king told midwives to kill baby boys. The midwives did not. When asked by the king why the boys still lived, they lied.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#95
post #3

America is still a deeply segregated society. And the segregation is built in such a way that it tends to keep people where they always where.

Is there something wrong with groups of people wanting to self segregate?

No, "freedom of association" means exactly that, in both the positive and negative forms. You are free to associate with someone, and free to not associate with someone.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#96

Don't try to send them to a 'good' school, certainly not an 'academically good' school. Bluntly, the K-12 teachers don't know anything worth much serious study or effort. The best can hope for from a K-12 school is that it will do no harm. Find a school that has a nice 'social atmosphere' and otherwise is RELAXED, e.g., with as little homework as possible. Then for the real learning, have your children do that at hom…

I think these parents are trying to get their kids out of schools that can't even enforce basic discipline in the classroom. There's a big difference between an environment where teachers don't know anything worth much serious study or effort and an environment where teachers spend almost all of their time trying prevent a riot from breaking out in the classroom and thus spend almost no time actually instructing students.

Also, it can be very hard to support real learning at home if you are a single parent working two or three jobs to make ends meet.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#97
post #94
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how worthy the purpose, falsehood is falsehood. Is it really such good education for your children to demonstrate that lying should be used to obtain the important things in life?

Since you are purporting that falsehood is never wrong... exodus 1:15-20 (NRSV) The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the…

No, I'm not purporting that "falsehood is never wrong" (you meant "never right", I suppose). In context, I was talking about falsification of records with an intention to obtain educational benefits otherwise disallowed.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#98

AS if anybody cared - how it works in Russia: - There are virtually no private schools, every school is public. - There are better schools and worse schools. In a big city there are a few really good ones and a bunch of mediocre ones. - A school have to accept anyone living in a proximity, but it may also accept anyone else. So the good ones set up entry exams. Mediocre ones enroll everybody. - I guess there are some…

In general, schools in America have much much lower quality than ones in Russia. Some immigrants families here in Bay Area are quite frustrated because schools here seems to have a goal to be "a safe and pleasant place where you put your kids so you can go to work" instead "place where kids learn stuff".

Basically, schools are made in such way that no real hard work is actually done at schools and that everything needs to be done at home (evenings, weekends, etc.). I believe that is reason schools with Asians and Whites kids are much more successful.

So my theory is that there are no "good" or "bad" schools here in America: all schools are of a equally low quality, there are only "good" and "bad" neighborhoods.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#99
post #52
post #15

>> In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. I'm not sure if it is entirely fair to single out the education system here (once again), or at least batch it in with "yet another failing". I believe more is at fault here. Unless I'm mistaken, tax payers in a particu…

The problem is that American cities are structured to keep the poor and minorities in nominally independent cities or suburbs that are geographically indistinguishable from the richer areas, but just independent enough to ensure that property taxes aren't shared. It's also hard to escape the fact that many, if not most of these suburbs were explicitly set up to keep out blacks, latinos, Jews, and other undesirable gr…

> It's also hard to escape the fact that many, if not most of these suburbs were explicitly set up to keep out blacks, latinos, Jews, and other undesirable groups.

Actually, it's pretty easy to escape that "fact" because it simply isn't true.

Yes, there were some covenants like that, but they were relatively rare.

And, most of the housing stock is newer than that, so even if such covenants were somewhat common and were still in force, they'd cover a small fraction of the population.

Since they haven't been in force for decades....

> Canada shares a lot of the basic educational structure as the US, and sadly a good share of the racial baggage as well, but our cities are far more monolithic than most American cities.

More "monolithic" is right. Canada is about as diverse as Minnesota.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#100
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, poor people shouldn't have an education! That's what you are advocating with "Government shouldn't be involved in education." Is that really what you mean?

Why would it be in the interest of private schools to hoard their products from me? I only make $18000 (about half the median wage) and food companies don't price me out of the market. Car companies don't either. Given that nearly every human being is in demand of an affordable education it makes no sense for companies to not accept low income students. The only reason private schools are expensive now is because the…

Because for at least some, a large part of what they sell is social exclusivity. Those dirty little brown (or Jewish, or Irish, or Catholic, or Italian, or German, or in Fremont, CA, white trash ...) children will be kept away from your precious little gems.

Since school, education, economic potential, etc., are so tightly tied to social status, this is hardly surprising. It's also present in other goods: I'm sure you can think of luxury cars, foods, clothes, clubs, etc., whose appeal and cache is largely their exclusivity and the fact that the great unwashed masses can't access them. No, this doesn't apply to all goods, but for a class of them, yes. (That this is also tied to price discrimination behavior on the part of producers also has something to do with this).

What is the term used for the highest ranked colleges in the US? Oh yeah: "highly selective".

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