xp also a fair point! I guess my answer would be "bar religious orgs from getting into the charter business" and start there.
― sleeve, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:40 (five years ago) link
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
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:41 (five years ago) link
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
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:44 (five years ago) link
xp no I saw you post abt that on FB, I will look into it!
― sleeve, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:45 (five years ago) link
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)
― the late great, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:46 (five years ago) link
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, 28 November 2018 21:47 (five years ago) link
The argument that minorities prefer segregation does not resonate with me, personally
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:47 (five years ago) link
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 thisI’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 areasA) through admissions protocols that favor whitesB) by skimming students of color from public schools through i.e. “leadership academies”
― rb (soda), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:48 (five years ago) link
are you a minority, Dan?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:48 (five years ago) link
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.
― the late great, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:49 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:50 (five years ago) link
sarahell, I am not, but Oliver Brown was
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:51 (five years ago) link
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.
― the late great, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:52 (five years ago) link
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.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:54 (five years ago) link
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.
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:56 (five years ago) link
("theirs" == somali parents' tax dollars)
and who is "the public"?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:57 (five years ago) link
idk does this now deserve a thread or is each of these posts proferred as tbomb or
― old yeller-at-clouds (darraghmac), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:57 (five years ago) link
i ... must have missed that part of the constitution
― the late great, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:57 (five years ago) link
whether the education was better or worse ... is kind of beside the point
!!!
― the late great, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:58 (five years ago) link
u missed the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment?
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:58 (five years ago) link
i blame the schools
― old yeller-at-clouds (darraghmac), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:59 (five years ago) link
afaik charter schools cannot deny students on the basis of race am i wrong?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 21:59 (five years ago) link
well its an anagram of racehate so
― old yeller-at-clouds (darraghmac), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:00 (five years ago) link
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"
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:00 (five years ago) link
i don't think it's the same exact way
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:04 (five years ago) link
It's literally the same way that it doesn't matter whether "separate but equal" schools were actually equal!
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:06 (five years ago) link
kinda feel like issues about privilege and equity that are mostly agreed upon in other contexts are being ignored here
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:07 (five years ago) link
chin stroke emoji
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:08 (five years ago) link
my understanding is that unlike a segregated school, nobody is being forced to go to a charter
― the late great, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:09 (five years ago) link
and after integration, one of the things that happened was "tracking" -- which regularly ended up segregating the students of color into remedial classes
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:10 (five years ago) link
tracking existed before school integration, but it made for a perfect vehicle for racism
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:11 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:11 (five years ago) link
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
― Dan I., Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:14 (five years ago) link
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
― 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.
― remy bean, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:15 (five years ago) link
― 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
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:15 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:16 (five years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:17 (five years ago) link
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.
― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:19 (five years ago) link
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?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:19 (five years ago) link
... without the expense of having their children go to private schools. (xp)
― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:20 (five years ago) link
Tom D - yep, it's very similar
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:21 (five years ago) link
fair enough, mordy. i searched for the thead but i can't find it. i know it was about the 2016 ballot measure question in massachusetts. for those interested:
this is nearly ten years old, and still holds water: https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/choice-without-equity-2009-reportthis is from the brookings institution (of all places!) and summarizes more recent observations https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/12/11/how-charter-schools-are-prolonging-segregation/and this is the union line: http://neatoday.org/2018/05/04/racial-segregation-in-charter-schools/
― remy bean, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:24 (five years ago) link
i think of myself as a pragmatic anarchist (though sometimes the pragmatist wins out -- ) so it's an issue, of how to set up a system where people have agency to resist oppressive structures without allowing rich and powerful douchebags to take advantage of the system for their douchey ends.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:24 (five years ago) link
The fact that, over here, the supporters of the free school system tend to be hideous right wing ideologues is a bit of a clue.
― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:24 (five years ago) link
*sigh* yeah ... we have a similar issue w/r/t live/work housing.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:25 (five years ago) link
just to be clear -- i think the quote above suggests that charter schools mostly exist to serve nonwhite communities. compared to the 12 percent of predominately white charter schools "30 percent of traditional schools were predominantly white"
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:26 (five years ago) link
remy from that neatoday article: "While only 4 percent of traditional public schools have student bodies that are 99 percent minority (2014-15 school year data), 17 percent of charter schools are 99 percent minority. Furthermore, of the 6,747 charter schools in the country, more than 1,000 had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent." bc we're talking about charter schools we're talking about segregation of nonwhite student populations by choice. this is hardly the same thing as white segregation to "protect" white kids from minorities.
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:35 (five years ago) link
Should we do the same thing with waiting rooms and water fountains if people are opting in?
― remy bean, Wednesday, 28 November 2018 22:56 (five years ago) link
im kind of ok about segregation on group basis from non-majority populations (i mean i personally went to a state catholic school in scotland, where the introduction of such schools in the early 20th century was vehemently opposed by political protestantism with the slogan "No Rome on the rates!") but the other forms of "social selectivity" which in some cases comes along with the free or charter school model as it exists in Sweden, England and the U.S. is pretty sus' imo
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 28 November 2018 23:00 (five years ago) link