Comments

1
That’s funny because Socialist heroine Kshama Lama Ding Dong’s boyfriend and fellow ‘activist’, Calvin Priest, works at The Bush School, one of America’s most elite schools. Why not ask them this question?
2
Thanks for that piece of anti-union bullshit. I'm a little surprised to see it here though. I thought I was reading the Times for a second.
3
What does the heading of your post mean, anyway? Why don't you start with the explaining? http://pscs.org/community/board/
4
That article is all kinds of bullshit and I have no idea why you're addressing it to "private-school liberal parents" who need to explain themself (to paraphrase your words). It seems like the article is actually directed at those shitty, shitty teachers who only have jobs because the evil, evil teachers' union forces schools to employ the dregs of humanity. Pretty fucking tone deaf.
5
Has Jen’s Slog access been hacked?...
I’m confused.
She seems to be in agreement with me.
Or did someone declare 2014 to be opposite year?
6
I think Jen is trying to make a point. I have no idea what it is. As a private school liberal parent, I agree education is *a* key to the issue of income inequality. To argue it is *the* key ignores the role of tax structure and incentives have moved wealth to the top (10, 1, .1 percent, whatevs). It also ignores the assault on unionized workforces, etc.

So, as a private school liberal parent, who votes for every school levy I've ever seen, please explain, if you would Jen, what I'm supposed to be explaining myself for. I didn't vote for the asshats in Olympia who trash our school funding. I didn't support spineless governors (Locke, Gregoire) who refused to stand up to the trashing of our educational system in the name or protecting a democratic majority that got us the current Rodney Tom fiasco. Please tell me what I'm explaining.
7
@6 nails it.

There's no way the private education is fueling the majority of income inequality. That's all about systemic preference for the wealthy.
8
I think I figured Jen’s riddle out!

Private / charter schools are proving to be effective at providing an educational experience that is more likely to enable their graduates to earn higher incomes. This is bad because it causes inequality between their graduates and public school graduates. Therefore private / charter schools should be abolished.

Is that the answer you’re looking for Jen?
9
My kids have been in the Seattle Public schools since kindergarten. They are now in middle and high school. I've observed that one of the most important factors in the quality of each of their schools has been the personal, direct involvement of parents.

Voting for levies is great, and the right thing to do, but if a school's parent population, for whatever reason, can't participate in PTA, attend parent-teacher conferences, go to open houses, attend concerts, shows, and cough up hard-earned money at auctions, then that whole school suffers.

If you believe in public school, put your kids in. Relatively affluent, educated, English-speaking parents make a huge impact, especially in schools with many poorer, immigrant, non-English speaking parents who don't have the resources to provide much extra support to their kid's school.
10
Westside forever is right, and rtm, you now know what you have to explain. And I can't wait to hear that explanation. I predict it will be pretty fucking weak.

I am sick to death of self-styled liberal parents who do lip-service to public education and believe their duty to these PUBLIC institutions ends when they vote for a goddamn levy. It doesn't. Get your ass in the institution and help improve it or for the love of God, shut the hell up.
11
@9

Your position makes sense. Perhaps that is what Ms. Graves meant. If so, her link to the Atlantic article is confusing at best. Followed to it's logical conclusion, you would prohibit private schools. I'm not being coy - some countries do this, and it's a legitimate decision (though not one I agree with).

However, to get the results you really want, you would also need to massively reform the funding and structure of public schools. Because right now, many parents who "support" public schools do so by moving to (a) suburban school districts where there is a better funded tax base, and in some cases little racial and economic diversity, or (b) moving to a neighborhood in the city that replicates, on a smaller scale, the suburbs. I know plenty of people who buy houses in Maple Leaf so that they feel comfortable sending their kid to public school there.

I'd suggest that if we had a functional democratic majority (never mind a progressive one) then properly funded schools, under McCleary, wouldn't need auctions for funding. Would have properly paid and trained aids to replace volunteer parents. And would have arts and other programs to attract families. In other words, they would look a lot like the suburban public schools I attended, where the vast majority of parents dropped their kids off in 1st grade and picked them up 12 years later.

In short, I agree with a lot of what you say, but reserve my right to pay all the levies and taxes for public schools, and then dip in to my own pocket to pay for the school I want my kid to go to. I don't believe in charter schools or vouchers - because they drain the public system. I put my money where my mouth is.
12
@ 10

Simmer down, sir.

@ 9 argues "if a school's parent population, for whatever reason, can't participate in PTA, attend parent-teacher conferences, go to open houses, attend concerts, shows, and cough up hard-earned money at auctions, then that whole school suffers." Well, even if we eliminated private schools in Seattle, do you really think that the schools in Rainier Beach would magically have parents who could do all that? Or would single parent households continue to have trouble working two jobs and attending parent conferences?

I also struggle with your sense that in order to support a public system I must actively participate in it. I can support public transit and still own a car - but by your logic, I could only support public transit if I sold my car and only used transit. Can I support community centers and still belong to a private club? Can I support the post office and still use FedEx (just kidding - I know the post office pays for itself!)?

So I'll decline your invitation to "shut up", and would welcome your additional thoughts on how to improve public schools.
13
What @9 said.
14
The truth is that it is often easier to change your own situation than it is to change a community. If you want to improve your child's education at your public school, you have to improve the entire school, which is no small feat. Add to this the opposition of political conservatives, teachers who dislike being told how to teach (remember, it's not just concerned and well informed parents that make suggestions, it is also scientologists, creationists, and Ayn Randians), the indifference of less committed parents, and it becomes a monumental effort.

Or, if you have the money, you can get the same effect for your child by paying for tuition at a private school.

The latter option does not make you a bad person. Often it just makes you a realist.

Ultimately, the problem lies with people that vote against public school funding and/or use it as a wedge issue.
15
@ 14

Thank you. I am a realist. I chose to live in Seattle, so my kids could grow up in a city, and live with all sorts of people. I also know my kids - and my firstborn, on the mild edge of the autism spectrum, would not have succeeded in the school where he was placed. I could have saved a lot of money by moving to the suburbs - as my parents chose to do nearly 50 years ago.

I agree with @9's point that parent participation is awesome. I agree that private schools do siphon off some of that parent base. I also think that part of what sustains Seattle is the relatively high number of private schools, allowing families to stay in the city. If you force families to the suburbs, you not only lose the parental involvement, you lose the tax base as well.

btw, one of my children wanted to attend a more diverse high school. Discussion were had, and that child is at Garfield now, with Mr. Savage's son. At a recent concert, I was surprised that (a) the choral groups are not racially diverse, (b) the attendance was not nearly as good as at private school events, perhaps because (c) I had to pay to attend.
16
Think kids should be martyrs to their parent's ideology? Then go have some kids and martyr them.
17
I was forced to pull my kids from the public school they were in after my daughter was violently attacked on school grounds and the school refused to address it. We were in a district that did not allow transfers, so we put them in a private school out of necessity. They reached an age where they could have switched back to public for the next level but by that time they were already entrenched socially and were doing really well so they stayed put. When we moved into the city we had the option of taking them from their tiny school of 80 kids to Garfield - thousands of kids - or finding schools that were more like what they were accustomed to, size-wise. We chose the latter.

I know all about the moral implications of diverting resources from public schools and yeah I've wrestled with it but at the end of the day, I and they are happier with them being where they are and we contribute to society in a variety of other ways (in addition to property taxes and voting for levies).
18
This post and thread contribute to why Paul Krugman argues inequality needs to be at the top of the progressive agenda.

Because we know SOME things but not enough about causes, and SOME things but nowhere near enough about ways to reverse it. "Much more room for new knowledge", he writes.

His view is that inequality is the "defining" challenge of our time. Until we get more clarity we'll be taking an endless series of vigorous shots in the dark hoping like hell to hit on something useful.

At least I think that's what he's written here. You tell me.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12…
19
@7, private school IS systemic preference for the wealthy.

Putting your kids in private school is a big FUCK YOU to the people who can't afford to do that. I've got mine, Jack. Meanwhile, the public schools are lumbered with the poor, the disruptive, the disabled, the difficult to educate -- all of which costs a fortune that private schools get away with not paying for. And the presence of smart, engaged well-off students and parents from wealthy homes is one of the things that make schools succeed.

Private schools should be illegal, period.
20
Since Graves refuses to make views clear, we have to assume it they match those of the linked article.

It would appear that Jen Graves wants to eliminate teacher's unions and expand charter schools, and thinks liberal parents with kids in private schools are standing in the way of an educational paradise here in King County to match the post-Katrina educational paradise in New Orleans.

The vast majority of the kids of liberal parents in Seattle and King Co. ARE going to public schools. We have said over and over that we don't want your union busting charter school bullshit, even if we do complain sometimes.

This looks like an effort to do the opposite of what is implied on the surface. Jen Graves wants the liberal parents of kids in private schools to muster their financial and political resources (out of guilt I suppose) to work to dismantle and remake our public schools, about which they are profoundly ignorant. Is she on the Gates Foundation payroll now?

The childless can be so ignorant.
21
Explain myself?
OK.
My child is not a social experiment and I have one chance to get his formative education right. Public School was failing him badly. It didn't matter that I, personally, was willing to support his public school with my money and time. Others were, and are, not and schools are woefully underfunded and poorly managed. So...off to private school he went. Because, as I said before, only one chance to get it right.
22
If you can't afford private school for your kids you really shouldn't be having them in the first place.
23
I'm a public school teacher and a parent with kids in public schools. And a progressive. But I sympathize with parents who choose private for their kids. The governments that run public schools seem intent on destroying them with increased class sizes and underfunded programs, and poorly maintained buildings (just to name a few negatives) making learning (and teaching) in public schools a challenge to say the least. As long as you are still voting progressives into office, supporting education funding and fighting against charters/privatization, I don't have a problem with it.

The alternative is to move to or live in a place that has good public schools, which is de facto segregation and in many cases amounts to public schools that are for all intents and purposes "private" on some level (heavy subsidies from local taxes or parent-teacher associations).
24
I think it largely depends on what kind of environment you're leaving behind and why. The school we pulled our kids from was very well-supported, parents were climbing all over each other to volunteer, including myself. I certainly didn't feel like I was abandoning them, especially after they refused to even acknowledge that my child had been attacked, despite how involved we were as a family and how well my kids performed. I don't know how I would feel if faced with the same decision under completely different circumstances. I assure you though, I would never operate from a place of "fuck you, I've got mine," in this or any other situation.
25
Fnarf is right.

Most Seattle liberals (like rtm and others) talk a good game but when it comes down to it they're perpetrating the same old segregation and exclusionary bullshit by sending their kids to private schools.

God forbid their precious spawn mix with the browns and the poors!

When you send your kids to private schools you create economic and cultural enclaves that further doom public education by fire-walling your personal stake in crucial community infrastructure. Supporting levy's and taxes don't mean shit when your kids aren't actually THERE and when you're not participating.

Jen and the Atlantic are totally right.
26
I guess its just a matter of what is more important to you. Your child or the teacher's union.

Shall we meet and burn Lakeside to the ground tonight?
27
@17, you don't contribute a damned thing to society by having your kids in private school. You've got the money to do so, period. That's all you can rightfully say.

We've now got a tripartite school system: private schools, good public schools in high-income areas where parents contribute money, time, and other goodies to make those schools even better, and poor schools in poor areas where parents don't have the time to participate and don't have the money to contribute.

Actually, I guess we have another layer: charter schools, which are unproven and run by corporations.

Some progress we're making.
28
@25
So… what you’re saying, is that the Clintons and the Obamas talk a good game but when it comes down to it they're perpetrating the same old segregation and exclusionary bullshit by sending their kids to private schools.

God forbid their precious spawn mix with the browns and the poors!

When they send their kids to private schools they create economic and cultural enclaves that further doom public education by fire-walling their personal stake in crucial community infrastructure. Supporting levy's and taxes don't mean shit when their kids aren't actually THERE and when they’re not participating.

Right?
29
No kids, so no dog in the private vs. public school fight, but I just have to say I'm impressed by the extent to which Jen, after posting probably hundreds of well-thought-out and beautifully written arts pieces on Slog that got 1-3 comments, suddenly embraced trolling.
30
I didn't say I contribute to society by having my kids in private school, I said I do it in other ways, Sarah70.
31
@8 Yes. That's exactly right.

Oh. Hey. You forgot "BENGHAZI BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!"
32
Oops. That was @28
33
Having actually read Jen's pieces and being even remotely familiar with her SLOG output (not to mention the general tone of SLOG), I read both the headline and text of the link as a snarky rephrasing of the BS concern-trolly gist of the subject piece. I'm fairly certain she expected everyone to be able to recognize the same, tired old, false equivalencies, false dichotomies, and flimsy straw men, espoused in the article. I read this entire post as imagining the giant eye-roll and heavy sigh that I'm guess it was meant to convey... but maybe I'm wrong.
34
@14,

Wealthy kids are perfectly capable of getting a good education at public schools, considering that schools in their area are likely above average and that their parents can afford tutors and the extracurricular activities that give applicants a leg up when applying to a college that has its pick of 4.0* GPA students.

*Or whatever the maximum is these days.

@25,

There's no way there are enough private schools to accommodate the children of "most" Seattle liberals. Also, *most* Seattle liberals can't afford private education.

There are plenty of white middle class kids in Seattle public schools. A good step forward in getting people to take public schools seriously might be in acknowledging that they aren't cesspools full of the scary brown poors.

@19,

Making private schools illegal won't solve the problem of schools in wealthy areas being well above average and schools in poor areas failing. This country is at least as segregated by class as race. It also won't solve the far more serious problem of students failing because they have disrupted, if not neglectful, home lives.
35
At least Fnarf is direct. As I said, the logically consistent position is to completely eliminate private schools.

As to leaving the "expensive" children in the public system, that is true. It's equally true that by not sending my kids there, I save them the expense of inexpensive-to-educate children.

Finally, I post to far more of Ms. Graves arts columns and Mr. Constant's books columns. I am also called evil less often in those threads.

I guess there is a fundamental difference in how we regard "public" facilities. I think if I pay taxes for, say, roads, I need not attend City of Seattle transportation committee meetings, unless I choose to. Nor am I obligated to use public transit, although I pay taxes for it.

Others, obviously, feel differently. Enjoy the transportation committee meetings!
36
While his initial premise may be valid, there's a whole lot of erroneous bullshit in that article.
1) The New Orleans Recovery District is even worse than before. Turning all the public schools to charter schools has been a disaster.
Try this: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/06/2…

2) Expanding school choice: one of the latest buzz phrases in the neoliberal ed reform/deform fan club, the majority of whom all want to make money off charter schools like Eva Moskowitz and all the hedge fund managers. But school choice is a red herring meant to deflect from the real societal issues of poverty and equity that will take much more to address. There is no peer reviewed research that shows school choice makes any difference. NCLB has had school choice as one of its "pillars", yet when parents are given the opportunity to leave their supposedly failing school, most don't. Those who do leave don't do much better in their new school than they did in their old school. The charter profiteers love "school choice". Pack kids in, get the state money, "counsel" them out or force them out, lease buildings from their buddies at rates much higher or lower than the market value so that someone, somewhere pockets those public dollars. The scams go on and on, all under the guise of "school choice".
http://epx.sagepub.com/content/19/3/550.…
http://cloakinginequity.com/2013/03/29/l…
Or perhaps you think this kind of "school choice" is OK.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/places/c…
School choice and equity:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/779

3) Improving teacher quality. Another red herring. Teachers get blamed for societal woes, as do unions. Wendy Kopp (Teach For Awhile) makes big bucks pushing this falsehood through and getting her 5 week trainees installed as "teachers" when in reality they should be no more than teacher aides. Bill Gates gets up and cites his bullshit about teacher preparation programs (as reported by his astroturf NCTQ group funded by the Gates foundation) and it is taken as gospel despite huge flaws and errors in the supposed research. Teacher "quality" gets measured by abstract data points that have no more relevance to good teaching than whether or not I had beer or cider for dinner. For those of you yahoos who think student test scores are a good measure of teacher quality, think again. Student test scores have a higher correlation with student income than anything else. Kids who come from higher income homes have better vocabularies, are more likely to have had good pre-K, medical care, good nutrition. That is how you impact test scores, not by blaming teachers for shit completely out of their control. Besides, most tests are poorly written crapshoots aimed at rich white kids as it is, so OF COURSE they're going to do better. When you have passages and questions about tennis and golf scores in your test, do you really think the inner city kid is going know what the hell he's reading AND answer the question correctly?
Teacher eval research http://gsppi.berkeley.edu/faculty/jroths…
Student test scores and povertyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/poverty-test-scores_n_4298345.html
Look to how Finland chooses and educates its teachers - and how it pays them and respects them. You get what you pay for, fuckers.
http://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/defau…’s-success-educating-teachers.pdf

4) Strengthening curriculum.
The #1 problem with the American curriculum can be stated in 3 words. Breadth vs depth.
The American curriculum is 10 yards too wide. Nearly every other country covers fewer topics with more depth - especially in math.
Strengthening the curriculum - as in implementing the neoliberal's wet dream of a standardized national curriculum, aka Common Core, written by a bunch of people who are not - and have not ever - taught kids? Strengthening the curriculum - as in allowing special interest groups in Texas to nearly dictate the (pseudo) science curriculum for the entire country?
Narrowing the curriculum, particularly in areas such as math and social studies would allow for more in-depth study and understanding, rather than the shallow recall that most students currently have. This would also require teachers to have a more in-depth understanding of their subject area(s), which would also promote better teaching AND better assessment. Narrowing the curriculum DOES not mean teaching only reading and math, as this current test-based regimes emphasize. Standardizing the curriculum across the country is not helpful, particularly when most of the curriculum standards were pulled out of David Coleman's ass.
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/12/28/gerso…
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-…

I could go on, but I've had enough neoliberal bullshit for the night. When the rich fucks who think they can dictate and buy ed policy (think Waltons, Koch, Bill Gates, etc) and the idiots who believe the bullshit they spew actually want to do something about public education, they can start with pre-natal care for all, then make sure every child in America has proper nutrition and medical care, a safe place to sleep and play, and high-quality early childhood education. Then we'll talk. Until then, all the reform/deform ideas are bullshit and doomed to fail. Again.

37
I read the article. It didn't say anything, then failed to back that nothing up with data.

"For every successful KIPP college-prep charter school in the city, there's another charter school that's flailing down the road. But the successes clearly demonstrate a pathway for success—one that holds a much better track record than simply spending more money without setting necessary benchmarks."

What?
38
The primary determinant of your child's education is you. Home-based factors overwhelmed any and all school-based factors when it comes to determining academic achievement. So your child's education will be essentially the same regardless of where you send them to school because no matter the school, you're the home.

And what is that happens at home for high-performing studentst that isn't happening at home for low-performing students? Preparation, support, and motivation. Our schools, now as ever, do a great job educating students who arrive at the classroom prepared, supported, and motivated. Our schools, now as ever, do a crappy job educating students who arrive at the classroom un-prepared, un-supported, or un-motivated.

If education is going to become the solution to income inequality, then the boost up that kids need isn't curriculum, teacher quality, computers, or any other whiz-bang Education Reform bullshit. They need preparation, support, and motivation.

We've taken some steps down this road. We're working to provide more universal preparation in the form of pre-school, head start, and quality childcare. We're doing a lot about support with free breakfast and lunch and with before- and after-school supported study. We can do more to provide healthcare, dental care, and mental health services. Where we're really dropping the ball is in the area of motivation. There is no school so bad that a motivated student can't wrestle an education away from it and there is no school so good that it can force an education onto an unmotivated student. Unfortunately our schools are practically designed to de-motivate students. We need to do the opposite - design them around motivating studnents.

As to the choice that any family makes regarding the education of their children, I'm not going to kibbitz. Everyone has to do what they think is best for their family and their children and no one else has any business sticking their nose into that business.
39
Sorry for the typos. I really should make better use of that opportunity to review my comment before posting it.
40
Jesus, you people are heartless bastards.

Mr. herriman just informed you that his daughter was violently attacked. The school didn't protect her. So he go her out of there. That's your number one job: protect your kids.

But all you stone cold bastards can see is a "big fuck you" to the poors? Let his daughter get beaten and bullied and tell her "We're doing it for the poor, honey"?

Way to deny the victim. How about next time you have a dialog about his daughter's victimization and try to get a little insight into her experience before you judge?

Fnarf doesn't have kids. Most of you others don't. Never heard Jen Graves mention she had any kids either. But listen to you preach. Think you know it all? Then go have your own kids. Use them as your political show ponies, to make your point.

You know, every time a Democrat gets elected President all you same childless stone cold bastards come out of the woodwork to bleat that Chelsea Clinton or Malia Obama has to go to fucking public school too. You can't even win that argument with the #1 king shit Democrat. You can't even convince Bill and Hilary Clinton or Barack and Michelle Obama to swallow your kool aid.

So you go do it. You go have some kids and make them drink your kool aid.
41
In a state that can pass an initiative to increase school spending and pass an initiative to make it harder to raise taxes, its no wonder people send their kids to the best schools they can afford. Even liberals can take so much until they say fuck it and start taking care of their own. And hell our public schools are no better, if you live in south Seattle your kids are going to schools that are being investigated by the justice department, and if you live in queen Anne your kid gets to go to artsy fun time school where the middle class white kids protest when their white teacher gets fired, the irony of their white privilege lost on them...so why blame people who can't afford to live in a given zip code but still want the best for their kids.
42
Also Jen should explain wtf she means as the whole article seems very anti-slog...
43
Shitty parents raise shitty kids. This is news to Sloggers apparently.
44
@40 I'm with you. There are lots of reasons to make a decision to put your kid in private school if you have the resources. In Mr. Herriman's case he had a child who was objectively unsafe based on their personal experience and for whom they were unable to get adequate assurances of being safe in that public school system. My son was well served by public schools here in Seattle, but that doesn't mean all kids are. The childless giving child rearing advice really can be insufferable. Children simply aren't dogs.

On the other hand, if everybody's children were forced to attend the same public schools it might make a difference, but in truth it would make a bigger difference if you forced the children of rich conservatives to attend public schools selected at random than trying to guilt trip individual liberal families to do so.
45
@36 Thanks for the link about the New Orleans schools. Very enlightening. How anyone could post an article touting them as a model for school administration is beyond me. I guess when you are an art critic there is no requirement to check any "facts" one presents as true. I guess the reality is purely subjective.
46
i appreciate you guys backing me up on this. i really just answered the question to illustrate exactly that, @44 - there are a variety of reasons people might choose private school, and for people to blindly assume that it's racist or elitist rather than actually being what's in the best interest of the child for reasons they know nothing about is absurd.

and for what it's worth, at least the private schools i'm familiar with are very focused on social issues. winning at life and/or getting rich are not *at all* what they are encouraging the kids to focus on. i know how it looks from the outside, but honestly, the curriculum and liberal/progressive/socially conscious messages they consistently receive would pleasantly stun anyone who hostilely assumes otherwise.
47
This is one of the toughest nuts to crack, but from what I've seen, the folks saying "it's the parents, stupid" are right on the money. I have a friend who is a public school teacher here in DC. PUBLIC, not public charter or whatever else. She's an extremely effective teacher, and after a few years in the trenches of a terrible school, was "promoted" to a very nice (though not lily-white, more than half of her students are still of color) high-performing school. Now, keep in mind, these are FULLY PUBLIC schools in the same school district. As such, they each get the same funding per student, in-boundaries parents have an explicit right to enroll their children there, they each get the same bump in funding for special-needs students. But when a parent swoops in and buys golf clubs for the whole team because a few members can't afford them, NBD, and another gets his club to donate course time for practice, well, you see the effects of the monied neighborhood beyond tax dollars. Where she used to shell out her own cash to make sure all the kids had pencils, paper, and basic calculators, she now gets notes from parents asking if the classroom needs any supplies. Not to mention that those few poorer students are now in a world of the privileged, where they start to pick up habits and mannerisms and whatnot that are as much a part of success as grades and test scores.

The ONLY other identifiable factor between the schools, besides the parents, is using "promotion" to a better school as an incentive for teachers. As such, many of her students in the poor school may not have had such effective teachers in earlier years. This can be remedied with some incentives to teach in the worse-off schools, even if only temporarily, for more effective teachers. I could see her jumping at a bonus to go back to her old school for a few years after a "break" from what she endured (she was attacked, had personal items stolen, dealt with constant classroom disruption, etc.). She likes her calm new environment, but I know she felt she was making the difference that made her become a teacher, and opt to work in an urban district, in her old school.

From this, I'd say *economic* integration is the only way to improve schools in an across-the-board manner. But that causes a lot of problems in a society so economically segregated by geography.
I don't really have answers. Minor dents can be made through effective inclusionary zoning and the dispersal of affordable, subsidized, and fully public housing rather than its concentration. Who knows, maybe we just need to centralize the schools? Create mega-schools where everyone's kids are tossed together. I know it goes against several other ideals (like walkable neighborhood schools and small campuses that build community - though I think that could be mitigated by having huge schools with mini-schools within them, each with their own band, choir, sports teams, etc., but students randomly assigned), but maybe that's the only thing to do? When neighborhoods gentrify, a few people who can afford to hang on or get into IZ or affordable places benefit, and then the rest end up somewhere where poverty is already high or getting worse and nothing improves. But, of course, this does nothing about suburban areas which are already poor or getting poorer, each with their own district and structural issues to centralization (larger land areas (increases in transportation costs and times), separate governments probably not willing to "share," etc.). My suburban school district is trying this - where they used to have several neighborhood elementary schools, a couple middle schools, and one high school, they've now limited the number of grades in each school and EVERYONE goes to the same school. Since they just started it, we'll have to see if it improves outcomes. In a city of only 20K, they had some schools in "academic emergency" and others "performing above expectations"...which makes sense since the city was highly segregated, as many are. The area we lived in was populated with middle-class homes and good schools, just over the tracks (no joke) houses were falling apart and schools were failing, and out in the new subdivisions where all the expensive houses were the schools were getting awards for quality. Of course they bought the parents off to not fight this tooth-and-nail by building all brand-new schools, which is something most cities can hardly afford (really, they couldn't either, but got a grant for the "experiment" and had poor enough facilities for some of the schools to qualify for other building funds). But if it works, maybe it's something we need to investigate on a broad scale.
48
I should note that there are already some complaints about the new centralized schools in my hometown, mostly surrounding transportation. While the district does bus its students, many parents choose to drive their kids (it's a very car-dependent area), and with schools being further from home for many students, it sounds like, from Facebook rants, even more parents are choosing to do so, causing some serious traffic issues around the new schools. They also have some ridic busing rules - elementary kids can almost all get a bus (I think the cut-off for their busing is .5 mile, or about 4 blocks), but many middle-and high-school kids can't because they've upped the requirement to, it sounds like 1.5 miles for middle school and 2 miles for high school. In an area where the weather often sucks and roads are built for cars, not people, and drivers behave like they own the damn planet (my mom lives 2 blocks from the new high school, and I don't know if I'd attempt the walk at starting time - there's one major road without a stop sign between her house and the school and I know no one would stop to let people cross, leaving the only option to walk 2 blocks up and back to the light, where I'd still be very concerned about turning cars not paying attention to pedestrians in the crosswalk).

The other transportation issue is that parents that used to have multiple kids in the same school now sometimes have kids in different schools (used to be k-5 in the same building, now k-2 and 3-5 are separated, and the middle school may be further away than their old one).

Finally, start times got cray-cray because there's no money for *more* buses, even though more kids now qualify. As a result, there are now 4 different school start times instead of 3, and the high school kids got the sucker punch of now starting at 7:15 (which means some kids need to be on the bus as early as 6:45...or realistically start walking at that time or earlier if they live near the 2-mile cut-off) and parents got the sucker punch of their youngest (k-3) starting at 9:10 (busing starts at 8:35), after many parents need to be at work. One high school friend actually took the year off work until her kids are in the same school because she lives basically right next door to the k-3 school, so her youngest couldn't be bused and needed to be at school well after when she needed to be at work. While I think a well-balanced 8-year-old can walk 5 houses down the street to school, I'm not sold on their ability to reliably get themselves out the door on time over a half hour after mom leaves for work.
49
You're welcome, @45. There's a whole lot more out there, but that article linked to a lot of the better research. There's also info on the high expulsion rate of students:
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/…
and on attempting to get some oversight
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/…
and excluding special ed kids from the charters
http://blog.amsvans.com/nola-charter-sch…

Scary that NOLA is being held up as a model of success, and that Arne Duncan, Fool Secretary of Ed, is holding them up as that model.
50
“Not to mention that those few poorer students are now in a world of the privileged, where they start to pick up habits and mannerisms and whatnot that are as much a part of success as grades and test scores…….I'd say *economic* integration is the only way to improve schools in an across-the-board manner”

But what if the poors refuse to learn the good manners and behavior of their betters, my kids should be sacrificed?
51
@40 While I agree that charter schools are a red herring and a disaster, everybody has "good reasons" for abandoning public schools. Everybody has great excuses for sending THIER precious child to private schools. Everybody. I understand it. It's instinctual. But it's still wrong.

This trend creates an exponential race to the bottom no matter what the reasons.

You either have liberal principles. Or you don't.

"Well, I support public education tax levies but... I just HAVE to send little Sally to a private school..."

With out YOUR kid in a public school you don't have a real stake in the public school system. Just fucking admit it already. When shit get's hard, you're not really a progressive because all you really care about is your own.

It's a similar mentality to liberal Anti-vaccers. Everybody has all these reasons why they just have to protect their little special offspring, basically fucking over everybody else's offspring.

I've been to dinner parties here where in the same breath a good liberal will brag about their support of a school levy, then go on to talk about how hard it was to get their kids into Epiphany or Bush (the clincher is when they brag about the number of exemptions they claim on their liberal taxes!). I nearly choke over the hypocrisy.

When it comes to the actual sacrifices that have to be made to make a progressive system work, suddenly everybody is this magic snowflake exception. Yet they expect the progressive system to still function for them without being stake holders. But that's not how it works. You HAVE to participate in a community or it all falls apart. Period.
52
@51

Did you revoke their Liberal Card right there on the spot, in the middle of dinner and everything? I bet they didn't even know an officer from Liberal Central Command was sitting there the whole time they incriminated themselves.

If you ask me, if you HAVE to participate, then you HAVE to get yourself some kids of your own. Make some or adopt some, and then get your ass to PTA meetings. Childless people and parents who send their kids to private school are equally culpable in refusing to participate in the school system. They're both part of the problem.
53
@52 Yeah. You should make sure abortion and all birth control illegal too! You'll really get all those kids into the schools.

People without kids ARE forced to participate in the education of people who do have kids via taxes etc. As they should be. We need children.

I said people need to participate if they HAVE kids and believe in public education. Only if they want it to work, that is. Not merely assuage their guilt.

Liberals who send their kids to private schools cannot have it both ways. They're the ones who SHOULDN'T have kids because they are unwilling to do what society needs them to do support children - everybody's children.

You know as well as I do that 99% of the liberal parents out there sending their kids to private school is because of some displaced notion of making their kids "competitive." And fear of the poors - another way of saying for status. NOT because they're all under threat of physical violence.

Public schools are not this violent Road Warrior dystopia you claim them to be. If there were more high achieving middle and upper middle class kids attending they wouldn't have most of the problems they do have.

What you are arguing for is segregation. How the fuck are we going to keep each generation invested in a society that they know nothing about if we class segregate them from birth? Because that is what private schools do and we can see the negative effect of this all around us.
54
@53

Mr. Herriman tried to tell you he put his daughter in private school because the public school was incapable of keeping her physically safe. Your fixed ideas are impervious to anyone enlightening you with their lived experience. You've already got it all figured out so nobody can tell you different.

I have no idea where you get this guilt thing from. I don't feel guilty. I don't know anybody who shows any signs of feeling guilty about anything. Maybe you're projecting your own guilt? I don't know any parents who talk about competitiveness. Must be a secret desire for competitiveness that only you can detect, from afar. Like ESP. I hear a lot of talk about helping their kids fit in, to avoid being ostracized for not being cool enough, and ways of avoiding the wrath of bullies. The agreement among parents I know is that it's pointless to expect teachers to protect your kids from bullying; the only safe course is to not be a target. None have announced that it was all better after they went to a PTA meeting. Or that any teacher was particularly grateful for the advice parents had for them.

If you really think the only difference between a good school and a bad school is who goes to PTA meetings, then you owe it to the world to have a kid and get your ass to those PTA meetings. For some reason teachers are incapable of doing their jobs without the right parents in there at those meetings every month telling them how.

I can only assume that someone like you who has such amazing powers to know so much about parenting without having any kids would be a fantastic parent. You're far ahead of everyone else without ever having tried it! With a smidgen of real experience a parenting prodigy like you would know just what to do to fix every school your kids attended. Please, please have a kid. The schools so need you.
55
I love threads where nonparents feel entitled to criticize parenting decisions. I never knew that not being a parent gave you people such insight.

Good parenting means making selfish choices for your children's benefit. Live someplace where the public schools are failing? The chances that you, being the one good parent who cares about your kid's education at that school will do virtually nil to improve the school, while risking nearly irreversible harm bad schools can have on them. Asshole parents will use their kids to make a point to the world at large.

Good parents will find the very best option for them, even if it's not politically correct. I'm neither a supporter of "school choice" or charter schools, but I live in a corner of Denver where the district's schools are all rated poorly. I had to enroll my youngest in preschool at one - literally the highest rated school in this quadrant - because she needed speech therapy and couldn't get it at the place her older sister went, and the thing I noticed was the teachers spending a hell of a lot of time telling the kids to line up and shut up. It brought back a lot of memories for me because I'm a product of this school system myself. I concluded that telling kids how to behave is embedded in the culture.

Meanwhile, at the charter school the next district over (despite that, it's within walking distance whereas my "neighborhood school" is twice as far away), where I send my girls now (the younger one is now in K - and this is possible because of school choice), I volunteer a lot and see none of that. The kids have already been acclimated to proper behavior and so the teachers spend more time - get this - teaching to them. Yet some of you believe you can criticize me for not putting them in sit-down-and-shut-up-academy? I can tell you that they aren't teaching the kids about the most pressing liberal issues there.

Listen, folks. The best thing I can do for society - the most liberal thing - in bring up my daughters with my values and a good education so that THEY can contribute to society as productive adults. Does that mean not going to school with poor kids? Not exactly - since it's still public school, open to enrollment to everyone in Colorado who desires to send them there (and I know of one parent who drives 30 miles every day - and stays and volunteers all day because he's a disabled veteran - to bring his son to school), some are from low income families who rent apartments. Some might even live in Section 8 housing. And I know of some kids who live in country club neighborhoods. There are few African Americans, unfortunately, but this part of town doesn't have many African American families. What it DOES have is a huge Hispanic (primarily Mexican American) population, and about 25% of the kids at this school belong to that ethnicity, with another 12% or so Asian/Pacific Islander. Not bad for a district that was over 90% white, IIRC, 30 years ago.

tl;dr version - Doing the best for my children will do more for progressivism than being a PC kneejerk dick and sending them to worse schools because they're the ones in my local district. You can suck my asshole if you don't like it.
56
Washington state has a tax system which is extremely regressive and ineffective. Our spending on education relative to our income puts us 48th in the country in terms of the percentage of our income the state spends on educating our children.

I have worked hard for tax reform - remember ballot initiative 1098 and similar measures- but the Tim Eimans seem to win at the ballot box.

Steps for change:

1. An income tax that provides stable tax revenue that reflects WA's prosperity
2. Equitable distribution of state resources across districts and schools.
3. Let the wonderful teachers and educators in this state have the resources they deserve.

In the meantime, I remain a progressive parent with children in private schools, and don't feel particularly good about it.
57
unfortunately, but this part of town doesn’t have many African American families."

Why not move to an african-American neighborhood then and relieve yourself of the guilt, along with some of your personal possessions along the way? Not enough cupcake shops?
58
Following the logic here, I think quite a few of you progressive, intellectual libs need to have a few kids and move to rural red states and get involved in the community. Rising tide raises all boats, y'know.
59
As I have no children I am loathe to tell parent what they should or shouldn't do for theirs. One assumes that at the end of the day what is most important to them is what is best for their kids, and that can end up being private school. I myself, growing up attended every kind of school from public, to experimental to private, with a variety of experience. Some of the public schools I went to were awesome, some my parents had to pull me out of because I came home crying every day. Some I came home having had been beaten every day. I remember my first day at a Catholic all girls school after being terrorized for 3 years. Some one slammed a locker and I whirled around ready to throw down.... and nothing. Everyone was just going about their business. It was a revelation! I wasn't going to get beaten, or thrown against a locker and have some boy shove his hand down my pants. (True story! And it was three of them!) My mother wasn't going to cry with me after school anymore!
When push comes to shove, what would ya'll have told my parents to do? Cuz it's one thing to talk about abstracts, it's another when your daughter is being beaten and sexually assaulted and the school can't or won't provide a safe environment for your child. Do you save your child, or do you leave them there to suffer for your principles? If you save your child, is it fair to the other children? No, but parenting can often mean making selfish choices, because your children are, and should be, your first priority.
60
In all seriousness, it isn't about the competitive edge. I work in a University, and I see kids from public schools all day come in with AP credits for two semesters worth of physics and calculus courses. I see others coming in needing developmental courses at the community college just to clear state entrance requirements. The latter finish up 3 semesters behind the former- I really don't feel stress about the competitive edge. The real reason for private/magnet/charter schools is that the cost and effort of getting in serve to screen out the criminals and other losers that the public schools can't turn away. And when those kids aren't there, the atmosphere is less like a police-state and the teachers can use less effort keeping control and more teaching. Far fewer standardized tests are just a bonus. This is indeed unfair for kids whose parents don't have the resources to move them, but that 's not on progressive parents using private schools- the schools are run by bureaucrats and politicians. They are the ones falling down on the job.
61
You call out progressive parents for abandoning public schools, yet you link to some charter-school propaganda. Um, what?

62
One factor that's not mentioned, much, in this discussion is bullying. I was a nerdy child of middle-class nerds in a small town where private school wasn't really an option. My first year in that system (7th grade) was a misery of dreading the end of school every day for fear of getting physically attacked. My bullies were smart enough to wait outside school grounds where the disciplinary system couldn't touch them. It hurts my ultralefty heart to say that they were all poors (the town where I lived was too white for the browns to be a factor).

I'm not saying that bullying never happens in private-school environments, but it's undeniable that after that year when I switched into a tracked system (still in a public school in a not-particularly well-off town), where everybody in my classes planned on going to college, I never had to fear for my physical safety again. Again, the ideal is a high-quality education and a safe environment for everyone, at every level. But if a kid is in a public school where he can't get away from the kind of trash that made my 7th grade miserable, and he has the option of private school, where the kids may not be nicer but they have a little more to fear from blemishes on their permanent records? There's no way I would condemn him for switching.
63
The discussion has gotten pretty ridiculous when it's assumed by a number of commenters that the only reason private school parents have taken their kids out of public schools is that the kids were beaten up in the latter.

There IS a my-kid-is-a-special-snowflake-and-can-ONLY-thrive-in-a-private-school-setting attitude alive out there. It's gotten more prevalent in the last few years, not coincidentally during a period when more affluent parents have moved to Seattle. It's disgusting, because it is racist and classist, and it completely disses public school teachers. Think about the words "public" and "private". If you think your kid can only survive in a private school, then you'd better start teaching him/her at home about the real world, because when the kid graduates those private schools, the world will be waiting. All of it, even the parts you apparently don't want the kid to be around now.

For whatever commenter said we should all shut up because most of us don't have kids, who the hell are you to magically know that? I had two kids in public schools years ago, and a grandkid in one now.
64
@63: I agree that ideally we should do a lot more to support the public school system. Universal public education is one of the great things this country has accomplished and letting it be crippled and chipped away little by little in unconscionable. I think the current system of funding schools though local property taxes sets up an automatic disparity and is definitely classist. I think charter schools are a blight.

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