truth bombs

xp well, i'm certainly not going to argue that that never happens, because i have seen that happen firsthand!

I kinda think any scheme that works to defeat public school integration is a bad thing

honors classes?

even if the integrated schools disadvantage the already disadvantaged? And the charter schools have the potential to provide greater equity?

that's only true given the already dire state of public school underfunding, IMO. ideally the district where the Somali parents live could afford an immersion program!

It is a really weird feeling being in the position of having to argue that school integration is a good thing

ha, as sarahell notes it is a big internal conflict for someone who mostly identifies as anarchist (like myself)

there's so much money, it just all goes to the military. there could be federal matching funds out the wazoo if we had our priorities straight. it's usually the elephant in the room when discussing the limitations/failures of the public sphere.

ideally the district where the Somali parents live could afford an immersion program!

that's the thing (also see yr next post) -- it's an issue of pragmatics -- if the ideal doesn't exist, and you don't have the ability to implement it, what then?

I'm probably not capable of formulating the anti-charter arguments I have in mind as well as this guy I know, who thinks about this stuff professionally: https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=mhlr

xp also a fair point! I guess my answer would be "bar religious orgs from getting into the charter business" and start there.

sleeve & hoos - have either of you read Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules"? ... it's interesting in this context, in that government bureaucracies are posited as products of utopian thinking, in the way that it seems integrated public education / anti-charter school politics are also

Which article he basically summarizes here (xposts)

Since the NY Times wrote today about charter schools as a vehicle for segregation, I guess it's as good a time as any to share my most recent article, published last month: https://t.co/JhJRkQn1VU pic.twitter.com/UEj7sVlCl9

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) August 15, 2018

xp no I saw you post abt that on FB, I will look into it!

education is really a field of dilemmas. it's like a rug, you push down one corner and the other pops up. i consider myself a physics and chemistry teacher, not a social engineer. nobody is saying school integration is a bad thing! but to what degree do you decide to pursue integration? these kids were living in a low-income urban area, mostly second-generation hispanic and african american. from their perspective, integration would have meant competing with native students with native language skills and very different cultural norms. they didn't *want* to integrate that quickly. should they have been forced to? would it have been enough to integrate into their own neighborhoods, or should they have been bussed to affluent white suburban neighborhoods? what would be the proper degree of integration for a tight-knit community of recent immigrants? (who, by the way, were feeling a lot of islamophobic prejudice in the wake of 9/11)

it's a bit uneven, but the first part is really great -- he has a great anecdote about the Direct Action Network being given a car as a donation and how anarchist/radical org structures are challenged by things like that

The argument that minorities prefer segregation does not resonate with me, personally

i'm interested in his understanding of the data bc he seems to be arguing that charter schools mostly exist for white parents to take their white kids out of public schools and send them to charter schools instead and afaiui that is not substantiated by the demographic information tho maybe tlg can speak better to this

I’ve written at length about this professionally — but the essence of it is there are two mechanisms by which charters enforce de facto segregation in urban areas

A) through admissions protocols that favor whites
B) by skimming students of color from public schools through i.e. “leadership academies”

are you a minority, Dan?

xp

In the end, the chartering body of this school didn't really have the professional skills or educational leadership necessary to run a school. they had a lot of trouble with programming the schedule and with budget, and they had trouble attracting good teachers. they lost their accreditation and the school unfortunately folded within a few years of opening.

so in the end, no i don't think it was a good thing. but i don't think it was a good thing for pragmatic reasons - the kids didn't get a good education! - rather than ideological ones.

school integration is generally a good thing bc it establishes national cohesion but it's not an unambiguously good thing and has been a vehicle for eliminating group difference and promoting assimilation into mainstream cultural norms. not all parents from all kinds of walks of life want that for their children and the future of their community.

sarahell, I am not, but Oliver Brown was

The argument that minorities prefer segregation does not resonate with me, personally

the argument that minorities do anything as a group doesn't resonate with me (speaking as a non-white, or at least a non-european)

but this particular group of people seized democracy by the reins and did what they wanted with their taxpayer dollars. is that a terribly bad thing? i don't know.

it also makes me think of schools in places that have like "abstinence-only sex ed" and other fucked up conservative political policies that because public education is part of government, the politics of the rulers get integrated into the curriculum -- I guess I should consider myself lucky that growing up all we had to deal with is saluting the flag, agreeing that drug use was bad, cops were good, and responding promptly to bells like the future factory workers of America.

Okay, but it wasn't theirs. It was "the public's". and whether the education was better or worse, or whether kids got to stay safely ensconced in the culture of their parents or not is kind of beside the point. It's unconstitutional.

("theirs" == somali parents' tax dollars)

and who is "the public"?

idk does this now deserve a thread or is each of these posts proferred as tbomb or

i ... must have missed that part of the constitution

whether the education was better or worse ... is kind of beside the point

!!!

u missed the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment?

i blame the schools

afaik charter schools cannot deny students on the basis of race am i wrong?

well its an anagram of racehate so

yeah man, it is beside the point, the same exact way that it's beside the point that the education is absolutely stellar at the local 95% white "classical academy"

i don't think it's the same exact way

It's literally the same way that it doesn't matter whether "separate but equal" schools were actually equal!

kinda feel like issues about privilege and equity that are mostly agreed upon in other contexts are being ignored here

chin stroke emoji

my understanding is that unlike a segregated school, nobody is being forced to go to a charter

It's literally the same way that it doesn't matter whether "separate but equal" schools were actually equal!

and after integration, one of the things that happened was "tracking" -- which regularly ended up segregating the students of color into remedial classes

tracking existed before school integration, but it made for a perfect vehicle for racism

i think if there are charter schools that racially discriminate then the state should intervene. if they are "encouraging" de facto segregation by appealing more to some groups than others and thereby creating class compositions that are weighted towards one ethnic group or another, i don't see that as a problem.

well, I'm still at work, so with a heavy heart I bid y'all and the myriad challops you're dropping in the truth bombs thread adieu

afaik charter schools cannot deny students on the basis of race am i wrong?

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 4:59 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are you asking this in good faith? you and i have talked about this quite a bit on other threads. it's sort of grand secondary gain of the entire urban charter school movement, and also the, silicon valley, uh, "school reform" edvestors.

it's a bit uneven, but the first part is really great -- he has a great anecdote about the Direct Action Network being given a car as a donation and how anarchist/radical org structures are challenged by things like that

― sarahell, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 9:47 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah yeah i def read this specific excerpt somewhere

Since their inception, a defining characteristic of charter schools has been their tendency to serve highly racially concentrated student bodies. For example, national attendance data gathered during the 2014-2015 school year showed that 54 percent of charters in the United States were nonwhite segregated and 12 percent were predominantly white.69

this is from the stancil piece- i'm not sure that it's obvious what someone should read out of this information tbph.

remy i remember discussing charter schools here on ilx before but if you think we reached some kind of consensus between us about the racial discrimination policies of charter schools i def don't remember that. maybe u can link me to the other discussion tho i'm happy to reread if i'm forgetting something.

i'm interested in his understanding of the data bc he seems to be arguing that charter schools mostly exist for white parents to take their white kids out of public schools and send them to charter schools instead and afaiui that is not substantiated by the demographic information tho maybe tlg can speak better to this

I don't know if charter schools are the same as free schools in the UK, sorry England, but that's pretty much what free schools are for here - I suppose more accurately they're for white middle class parents to take their kids out of state schools where there are too many kids from poor or ethnic minority backgrounds, often the same thing in London.

look at the quote i just posted tho. does that support a narrative that charter schools exist for white parents to put their kids in?

... without the expense of having their children go to private schools. (xp)

Tom D - yep, it's very similar