I read the piece that Betty quoted below, and it’s pretty good. The author, Magdi Semrau, is right that running away from race is a losing position, and that turning the conversation away from amorphous sloganeering about CRT to questions like “should kids be allowed to call other kids the n-word in school” is the smart way to handle Fox nonsense dogwhistles.
Still, in my mostly white suburban neighborhood, where the Republicans were able to take back the town board by running thirty-something white women who seemed like competent non-ideologues, there’s something going on that’s based in fear. Most of the people who live in my suburb chose it because of the quality of the schools. Specifically, they chose it because they didn’t want their kids to go to an urban school that has an under-50% graduation rate and lots of violence. If I were running as a Democrat in a county-wide election and wanted to be sure that I went down to a flaming 60/40 defeat, all I’d need to do is to advocate a county-wide school district, where students would be placed by lottery, thus ensuring that more than a few would be bused to inner-city schools. If I called these moms racist for not wanting to send their children to schools full of black and brown kids, I’d probably increase that margin to 70/30.
Are these moms afraid of their kids interacting with other races? Maybe some of them are, but most of them are simply afraid of their children sharing classes with poor and lower-middle-class kids, because those kids tend to bring more baggage to school. Never mind that the baggage those kids bring is due to economic inequality that is the product of structural racism — suburban Moms who want kids who ace their SATs are not interested in their children taking part in what they believe is a social experiment, no matter what they believe in the abstract about racial justice.
If we’re going to craft policy proposals and messaging to counter the next round of Republican fear-mongering about schools, we need to understand that fear-mongering works when it appeals to real, visceral fear. Other than illness or injury, the possibility that little Jason or Jennifer won’t ace the SATs because they went to a school with lower standards due to socio-economic integration is one of the biggest fears of suburban moms. That’s just the ugly truth as I’ve observed it.
One more thing: as Josh Marshall points out this morning, one of Youngkin’s strengths was that he kept most of Trump’s stink off of his campaign. I’m pretty sure that Trump’s gross misogyny hurt Republicans in the suburbs. That’s something that we need to exploit, since Trump is clearly still in charge of the Republican Party.
[I framed this post as “suburban moms” but obviously “suburban dads” have the same issues.]
Another Scott
We can’t determine what they want to talk about, but we do not have to respond to their framing.
I really like forcing them to define what they mean by “woke” and “CRT” and similar nebulous buzzwords. Don’t retreat because one is afraid to stand up for what’s right. Don’t reinforce their language and memes.
“I don’t know what you mean by that [‘woke’,’CRT’, ‘parent’s rights’], but I do know that teaching children to be respectful of others, to be kind, to not be a jerk, to treat others as one wants to be treated, is universally regarded as good behavior to be encouraged….”
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
So funny you mention. The urban public school that my Younger Spawn is attending very much fits this. I am, like a slice of white women, very happy that she is attending a school that is pretty mixed in most ways. I am not happy that a cohort of her classmates are little shits. She’s reported a fair amount of profanity (they’re 10), which is obnoxious but not a dealbreaker. But she reported something more concerning this week, which is that a white classmate told a new kid that he couldn’t play with them “because he’s Mexican”. I wrote to the teacher about it (teacher is of Venezuelan descent, BTW). I’ve met the offending kid, and his parents are just the kind of low-class Trump trash you expect. I really am not thrilled about my kids being around crap like this.
CaseyL
A woman I used to work with, who was absolutely a Democrat, and who took her kids to do things like help out at NW Harvest (which collects and distributes food, esp. fresh produce, to people who need it) would not allow her son to pursue a friendship with a kid in his class because the kid was from a poor-ish family, and had various learning and social issues. She felt the friendship would somehow damage her family by needing to accommodate the kid’s issues, or that her son would pull himself down by trying to pull the kid up.
That was a sort of epiphany for me, about certain sorts of liberals: They’re as charitable as the day is long, but have an absolutely NIMBY attitude when it comes to personal relationships.
This translates to a kind of liberalism that only believes in “helping the poor” so long as the poor stay that way, and don’t get ideas above their station
(It’s definitely a class thing rather than a racial thing, except for the fact that children of color are more likely to have the icky issues wealthy whites want their children to avoid getting personally involved in.)
gwangung
I very much think a lot of the fear is race-based.
But defusing that fear shouldn’t be done directly on race, because that fear is arising out of subconscious fears, biases and assumptions.
I think being specific on what should be taught is a good path. There’s a foundational impulse of being fair and being just we can extend; and we can always say, that wasn’t a fair thing to do, so what should we do to make sure we don’t do that again.
Roger Moore
This kind of thing is exactly what people mean when they talk about structural racism. Parent’s are doing what they’re doing because they’re looking after the best interests of their kids, but the net result is to keep poor black and brown people down.
scav
CaseyL: The emotional baggage these hyper-suburban tiger moms’ are equipping their precious over-scheduled personal-accessory offspring with could power the world.
gwangung
@Roger Moore: Another instance of impact over intent.
West of the Rockies
I will say that I wanted my daughter to have a good academic experience. (She’s 20 now and about to transfer to UofO in Eugene, OR to major in psychology and minor in queer studies.)
When she was in grade school and HS, she had to deal with crap teachers (among the excellent ones), bullies of both sexes, lots of mean-girl shit from 5th through 8th, and homophobia. Most of this but not all came via the majority white population. My ex and I did what we could, which included in-class participation and changing schools once.
I think good parents want the best for their kids. Some of their fears are based on genuine issues. Sometimes it’s based on fear-mongering. As always, be leery of the one-size-fits-all explanations for behavior.
dr. bloor
@Suzanne: Little shits like the offending kids are to be found everywhere from the toniest NYC independent schools to the earnestly-but-usually-superficially integrated public schools in both cities and burbs.
Short of homeschooling, there’s no way to avoid it. Racism is like the ‘Rona, it’s everywhere and has no interest in observing arbitrary boundaries like school districts.
TKH
Are you paging Eric Loomis from LGM?
And it’s Connor and Maddie, not Jason and Jennifer.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@TKH:
I hope not. I know he identifies this as an issue, but I don’t see him offering any politically palatable solutions. Perhaps there aren’t any…
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: It also highlights why dealing with structural racism is going to be so insanely difficult. It can only be done via policy changes that will force people to deal with things they don’t want to deal with. Even if they’re potentially allies in the abstract NIMBYism will kill most of it
Just like integration of schools started to fail once the courts started to attack the way the north did segregation.
Suzanne
@CaseyL:
This is a real concern. My husband talks about how his brother fell in with some “bad kids” who used drugs and his brother developed a years-long drug problem. I ixnayed a friendship between Elder Spawn and a girl who was into some bad shit. I cannot fault parents for not wanting their kids to be in friendships with others who engage in bad behavior.
Betty
@Suzanne: It is a painful lesson for one for one so young, but it gives you the opportunity to help her understand that this child is probably reflecting what he learned at home, and, yes, some people are like that.
Eduardo
@West of the Rockies: Yes — and let us for a second acknowledge human nature. Parents will put their precious children first, valid fears or not. Race based fears or not. White parents and Asian parents and Black parents, in the US and in Cuba and I’d bet everywhere else.
So that selfish part of human nature is a tough issue and the main problem why so far you can only have communism under a totalitarian dictatorship.
So you have to try to go as far as you can in funding and resource distribution and trying to correct imbalances and tending to the underprivileged as far as you can while gaining some elections at least. You can’t do shit if you don’t win sometimes. That may include biting your tongue sometimes and not calling people names but rather trying to convince them they are better off when everyone is better off and appealing to their better angels. Implement policies that will benefit the more afflicted without insisting much in race or any other group.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: I think it just gets very hard because there’s a very fuzzy line between engages in bad behavior and has different cultural values. Drugs are pretty straightforward but not everything is. And while I’d trust you to have reasonable boundaries and be sensible about where you’re drawing lines there are absolutely plenty of people for whom engages in bad behavior means being black.
It’s really hard to properly navigate having an issue with that last bit and recognizing that there’s a legitimate concern with the first part. Especially if you’re communicating with people who think just being black is grounds to be considered a bad influence. It all gets conflated to them.
scav
@Suzanne: But then, by entirely avoiding contact with individuals with bad / undesirable behavior be it drugs or racism or different religions, we are entirely stripping our children from learning how to resist (or get along with) the influences of drug-taking, racism or preying to a different god. Besides, the notion that clean-cut kids with disposable cash aren’t taking drugs is a pious giggle in itself.
billcinsd
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I think he would say the same about you
Suzanne
@dr. bloor:
There’s different kinds of problems and bad behavior. Do rich white kids behave badly? Of course some of them do. But different schools take different approaches to consequences and that creates a different culture within a school. Hell, many schools with rich kids (thinking of some charter schools here) will just kick kids to the curb if they can’t behave well or they don’t get good enough grades.
PJ
@Eduardo: If you think Communism eliminated, or even reduced, selfishness and racism, methinks you never visited a Communist (or post-Communist) country. (Or just talk to some Romanies or Jews from behind the Iron Curtain, or, hell, Uighurs today.) I would go so far as to say that Communism actually increased selfishness because it eliminated independent social institutions designed to improve society as a whole.
CaseyL
@Suzanne: I understand that, and (if I had kids) would also want them to avoid involvement with peers who are already in that bad shape.
But my understanding in this case was that the kid was just socially awkward and didn’t have the funds to participate in ordinary social activities. Plus they were in, I think, 4th or 5th grade at the time.
James E Powell
@TKH:
Agree. Jason & Jennifer are so 90s.
Darkrose
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I don’t think Erik is really interested in finding solutions. It’s much easier to pat himself on the back for being a non-racist white guy on an issue that doesn’t affect him personally. He’s explicitly said he doesn’t understand why anyone would have children, so he not only has no skin in the game, but he isn’t interested in the multiple factors that go into parental decision making. He’s never, AFAIK, acknowledged that it’s not just white parents who send their kids to private schools (hi!) or move to the suburbs because urban schools are percieved to be bad due to lack of funding, not just because they’re overwhelmingly black and brown. And he doesn’t hold himself to the same standard; he teaches at the University of Rhode Island which is over 70% white–why isn’t he teaching at the Community College of Rhode Island, which is only 52% white? He’d argue that he took one of the few available positions in his field, but he doesn’t extend the same grace to parents who may have chosen to send their kids to predominantly white schools.
Suzanne
@scav: I actually removed Spawn the Elder from a pretty wealthy public high school and sent him to one that was much more working-class, in part because there was a lot of party drug use and social pressure at the rich high school. The working-class high school had more gang activity, some drugs, and the teachers there were not as adaptive to Spawn’s transition, calling him by the right name and pronouns, etc. Both schools had their problems. But they weren’t the same problems.
Eduardo
@PJ: I was born in Cuba and escaped when I was 32. And that was my point: because Communism ignores human nature it makes everything worse
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@billcinsd:
True, but I think he’s more black-and-white than me. For example, “You either support what it will take for actual integrated public schools or you are saying you are OK with racism. ” (https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/07/whites-have-always-opposed-real-school-integration) is reductive.
Starfish
The work of Derrick Bell (ooh critical race theory) started because bussing did not work. Who wanted to send their kids to the suburbs to have white children be aggressively racist towards them?
You can’t even do Critical Race Theory properly, mistermix.
The suburban white women were not racist for all their “but my kid likes the school resource officer that he has zero interactions with” nonsense. Why are their police in suburban schools? Having no outside threats against schools to police, they are policing behavior issues that should be addressed by people with a background in child psychology and growth and development.
Brachiator
Bullshit. White people do everything they can to make sure that schools with black or brown students are starved of resources, and then make sure their kids don’t attend.
Youngkin is a plutocrat with no political experience. He is like Trump with less baggage. But the stink is still there. Did he promise to run the state like a business?
Eduardo
@PJ: And to clarify a little bit my short comment.
Take China. Mao tries to make everyone equal at the cost of dozen of millions of dead and untold human misery. But obviously the big chiefs of the communist party were well more equal. So they implement the economic reforms that benefit the new class more than anyone else. So the initial objective which is equality is gone. But the all too powerful dictatorship is there: hence the genocide against the Uighurs.
Cuba is a similar case. We have now all the repressive apparatus of a totalitarian regime + a highly unequal society where a small mafia controls all the profitable parts of the economy. But at the beginning there was an attempt to make everyone equal — the peak was when they nationalized everything, including the guys that repair shoes in 1968
Starfish
@Brachiator:
The song goes, “But why can’t I want THE BEST for my child?”
West of the Rockies
@Eduardo:
Needed change comes at a snail’s pace. ?
But you’re right; elections must be won for us to be in position to make those changes.
soapdish
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: 100% agree with this, not that I have any solutions that are palatable, either.
whomever
Can I just also bring up Charter schools? I live in a majority African-American neighborhood. The AA parents I meet at the playground in the vast majority LOVE LOVE LOVE their charter schools. It’s often expressed in terms of the kids not going through what their own schooling was like. A lot of them like the structure; we may not agree with this but we can’t dismiss it. When the left blanket attacks charter schools (which they do), they can’t just pretend that no one likes them.
Edmund Dantes
Well don’t be surprised if your Allies get tired hearing “hey vote for us where better than the other guys, but we can’t actually change anything cause ‘reasons’ and we will lose those voters we need to get a majority but can’t actually change anything that’s been a problem for going on decades and decades of time” isn’t much of a winning GoTV message.
you can only promise nibbling around the edges at best (maybe) at problems for so many decades before it falls on deaf ears or they start demanding more actual progress for their votes.
Feathers
OT, but hilarious TikTok: petty, petty co
ETA: There is a sequel.
laura
@Suzanne: I went to school on the poor side of town until high school. The kids from the well to do side were light years ahead in drugs, sex, crime and the like. Their parents had social lives while we had family and nieghborhood eyeballs on us almost all the time. (So happy to hear of your pantsless attendance at Bad Religion and the good times live music brings)
This post is why IMHO, only public education is allowed and to receive public funds. Every public school in every neighborhood should provide quality education. If you want a segregated education to keep your children away from “those people” or homeschool then you can pay for it. Free public education was one of the greatest achievements of this country – and white Christian nationalists have been on a tear to get around it since Brown v Bd of Ed. Sadly, the Coney Barrett Court is primed to revisit that just as soon as they finish gutting reproductive rights, privacy, the administrative state and voting rights.
Eduardo
@Starfish: Correct me if I am wrong, but for what I read in the last 2 or 3 years busing actually worked for what it was intended. But that didn’t prevent the backslash amongst White suburbanites. And in that sense busing did not work.
Adam L Silverman
I’ll just leave this here:
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Brachiator:
Interesting fact: the per-capita expenditure for inner city schools in Rochester is higher than for suburban schools. I don’t know if this is true in other areas, but it’s true where I live.
Eduardo
@whomever: Yeah — Heard the same from non rich Hispanic parents.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Some of the highest drug use I know of takes place at an upscale exclusive high school in West Los Angeles.
And the parents use drugs as well. But this includes prescription drugs and alcohol.
Kids and parents get arrested for DUI. But they can game the legal system and not end up with a record. Social Services will never knock on doors and put their kids into foster care.
Parents and kids have money and access to medical help and rehab, so they have some immunity from negative social consequences.
zhena gogolia
This was my experience too. A couple of my friends whose parents moved them out of our majority-Black school ended up addicted.
Kay
It’s unknowable and I fall into it speculation too, but probably “generally unpopular” is the right answer to “what caused this”. They were w/in 5 and then the general Democratic environment deteriorated and they stayed at even, plus or minus.
Adam L Silverman
@Suzanne: You’re kid is going to school with Stephen Miller?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/us/politics/stephen-miller-trump-white-house.html?_r=0
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@whomever:
This is also true for some parents in inner-city Rochester. Unfortunately some of those schools have closed because the founders/management were grifters. But others prosper.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
A helpful, super accurate framing sure to win hearts and minds
Woodrow/asim
Yeah. I know. My Mom flipped to the GOP over their support of her “school choice” advocacy. she saw how I “excelled” in 8 years of Catholic schools, and wanted that for other Black kids — without realizing how it also stunted me.
It’s a whole-assed problem; charter schools divide community experiences, in ways that weakens the energy needed to push back and better fund public schools, which is what we should be addressing. It’s an elitist issue in numerous ways, and you have to look at it in that way to start engaging people, even if that’s not how you approach them on it.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major: But true, nevertheless.
I would like to continue to hold onto the truth, despite politics.
zhena gogolia
I went to a school where we didn’t even have screens to show films on — they had to be projected onto hanging maps — while one of the suburban public schools (the parents of whose students all made their money in the city) had its own television studio.
ETA: Am I bitter? Ask me if I’m bitter.
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia: I mean it’s… not true. Lots of white people? Ok.
Far too many folks speak this way, it’s a bad habit that doesn’t help anybody.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The whole reason the Republicans chose to fix on CRT because CRT is way to complex for most people so they had this brown paper bag to wave around marked CRT and scream “scary stuff inside!” We saw it last night with that Dan Dawg Damn idiot that he didn’t know what CRT is, but he sure has hell wants it stopped, even after it was explained to him.
James E Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
I do not know if there is any framing of this issue that could win hearts & minds. Despite occasional statements in support of education, most parents only care about their own children’s education. This is especially noticeable when they are alone in a voting booth.
Geminid
I am not sure I would say that “trump is clearly still in charge of the Republican party.” He clearly is asserting dominance, and elected politicians still show him deference. But I don’t think we’ll know anything definite about trump’s strenth until next year’s Republican primaries.
North Carolina’s Senate race will be instructive. At a big party meeting last August(?), trump endorsed a three term Congressman to succeed Richard Burr. He shaded former Governor Pat McCrory while doing so. McCrory, also a candidate, responded that trump had listened to bad advice, and that North Carolina races are not decided in Florida. This will be a real fight
But as to the idea of hanging trump around Republican necks, that may or may not work. Terry McAuliffe tried it here in Virginia and it did not seem to be very effective. Fortunately, the Democrats will have a good record that can be promoted in positive messaging. And Democrats will have plenty besides trump to tie around Republican necks.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, that framing is from a time when inner-city schools weren’t considered the solution to all of the societal problems of the neighborhoods they serve. Currently, at least in Rochester, money pours into urban schools because they’re expected to fix every urban social ill, so they’re actually better funded than suburban schools. A majority – white, black or brown – are fine with urban schools getting more money per capita.
Brachiator
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Things vary. I have a friend who was a budget director for a big city school district in a Southern city with a majority Hispanic and black student population. In violation of state and federal regulations, extra money and resources were funneled to the white schools. And of course parents of means would make cash and property donations. During one time period, the elected head of the school district was Hispanic, but went along with how things were done. She was later fired for financial improprieties. Her predecessor had been fired for similar reasons. There is a proud tradition of graft that is hard to do away with.
Starfish
@Eduardo:
Here is the entire paper.
So much for your bussing when it ends in white flight that continues to leave the schools segregated.
Old School
@Feathers: That’s funny.
Woodrow/asim
I’ll just quote someone on this:
—-A New Sense of Direction (1968), Martin Luther King, Jr. (Paragraph breaks mine; this was originally a speech.)
The above is part of why I spend so much damned time and energy writing in detail, here and elsewhere.
I don’t get the grace of people assuming my best intentions on countless topics — especially race discussions.
Suzanne
@laura: I went to a public high school that was also very working class/poor. It’s gotten even more so since I graduated. Our rival high school is the one that Jeff Flake’s kids attend. That school had (and has) lots of drug issues, sex, shoplifting, blah blah blah. My high school had some violent white supremacy, gang trouble, and all the same stuff. My mother was very happy that my school was not majority white and not wealthy at all. She was incredibly unhappy about the violent white supremacy part.
A couple of years ago, Mr. Suzanne and I had our kids with us in a hotel in San Bernardino. We were there for a couple of nights for a music festival. A group of dudes sat down at the next table over from us at breakfast, and I instantly recognized them as Hammerskins. Mr. Suzanne didn’t notice it at all, but he didn’t have to spend time around that stuff. I have to admit that I don’t want my Spawns interacting with garbage like that.
Baud
@Woodrow/asim:
What does that guy know? He’s not even on Twitter.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Brachiator: See my comment @54 – at least in Western New York, this isn’t happening.
For a short period of time, we had an independent school superintendent for the inner city schools, Bill Cala. He had been superintendent of one of the suburban schools and was appointed in the interim between the last “savior” superintendent and the next one. (These “savior” superintendents are charismatic minority supers who come in and tell the school board that they’ll change everything in an instant, but who predictably fail and then move on to a bigger district.) Cala pointed out that the schools couldn’t fix the problems of the inner city. He said, rightly, that the issues are far deeper than lack of good education, and he advocated a more holistic approach to urban poverty. Everyone nodded their head and listened, and when his term was over, they appointed another savior who later left the district millions of dollars in debt due to gross mismanagement.
FlyingToaster
It’s not just racism or fear of violence (though that’s easily 50% of it). It’s also not wanting to fuck up your kid with a fucked-up school.
WarriorTeen goes to private school because our inner ‘burb school district was broke when she was in pre-K. That year they laid off 2 of the 3 art teachers (previously 1 at each grade school), 2 of the 3 music teachers (ditto). The following year they’d converted the art and music rooms to regular classrooms. So we chose an STEAM-oriented local private school, which happens to be as “integrated” (~10% POC) as the public schools.
Since that time, the public Middle School has kicked out all private music instructors (which used to be the go-to for local music teachers in the afternoons), which decimated their HS music department, and now that the district tore down and rebuilt two of the elementary schools, are looking to have new music and art teachers, because firing them didn’t raise MCAS scores.
Relying on property taxes for your education system is deranged. Trying to integrate by building massive districts and shuttling students hither and yon is also deranged (looking across the river at Boston). Spending the money building good local faciliities and giving your teachers enough resources to teach (and personnel to deal with the non-teaching aspects of school) has got to be a better strategy than this bullshit.
West of the Rockies
@Major Major Major Major:
Agreed. Those sort of monolithic statements are not helpful. Do all white people benefit from institutional racism? Very likely. Are all white people actively racist? No, not in my opinion. Lots or racist people don’t see themselves as racist and enlightening them as to truth requires something other than a sledgehammer. You want change or do you want more entrenched racism?
Suzanne
@Adam L Silverman:
My kid is going to school in a historically white (Italian and German) working class neighborhood that has a small and growing Mexican community. There was apparently some burglary and vandalism of the Mexican grocery store down the street shortly before we moved in. The neighborhood is also gentrifying (slowly) and that’s creating some tension.
Peale
You’d also lose 70/30 in a lot of places if you ran on cancelling football because it gives kids concussions and detracts from learning. Those Soccer Moms. Not even defensive of their chosen sports. Oh well.
Kent
Teacher here. I was a full time HS science teacher for about 15 years at several schools in Texas and Washington. Now I’m doing part-time subbing in the greater Vancouver (WA) area at about 8 different high schools that range from extremely affluent which are mostly white and Asian, to diverse blue collar schools that are a mix of blue collar whites, Hispanics, and Asians. Not many Blacks live around here.
At the HS level, every school has a core elite group of students who mostly travel together from AP class to AP class and mostly run the school, the clubs, student government, etc. If I am teaching AP Chemistry at an affluent school or a poor school it is pretty identical, sometimes the poorer schools have an even more elite cadre of kids in the class who are largely Asian and other immigrant kids. This is because they tend to have fewer sections. So a poor school may have one section of AP Chemistry were all the really bright kids are clustered, while an affluent school may have 5 sections of AP Chemistry that where the bright kids are dispersed and there are a ton of average kids who’s “tiger moms” have demanded that they take AP classes even though they might not be quite up to it.
Where the schools really diverge is at the lower end. If you are teaching remedial math or English at a poorer school you encounter every level of dysfunction from kids who can’t read even a little bit to every type of behavior problem. Teaching can be a disaster due to all the distractions and unmotivated kids. At a wealthier school the culture even at the lower tier classes tends to be more academic and if the kids aren’t learning, they are at least not disruptive. Expectations are most definitely higher. And it doesn’t start in HS, it is taught and modeled from pre-K on up in wealthy areas.
Then there is the whole issue of peer groups. If you have an average kid who is surrounded by college-bound peers they will tend to with the flow and do the same. If your average kid is surrounded by slackers who’s aspiration is to drop out of school and work at Discount Tire or the local hair salon then that is the direction your kid is likely to trend as well.
Bottom line? Really smart kids do well everywhere. But if you have more median kids, or even kids who are struggling. There definitely is a night and day difference between affluent and poor schools.
What is the solution? I don’t have a good one. I think you need to solve poverty before you can expect schools in poor areas to perform at the same level as schools in wealthy areas
And around here the most intense parents tend to be the Asian ones. If I’m going to get stuck at a social event with some obsessive parent bending my ear about some arcane change to the school district’s scope and sequence for 7th grade math it is almost certainly going to be an Asian parent. My wife who is a physician had a Asian doctor colleague who’s son attends the same school as my daughter. He pulled him out of marching band so he could spend more time at home with tutors and take an even bigger AP load even though he had near straight As. Poor kid basically has zero social life.
MisterForkbeard
@Suzanne: My wife and I have our kids in a local bilingual immersion school – it is (unsurprisingly) highly latino. When we first told my in-laws about this, they were instantly very concerned that our daughters would be in a “poor school with a lot of bullying and violence”, which was… yeah.
This mindset has been around for a long time.
Cassandra
@Adam L Silverman: The obvious answer is to get rid of all fiction in libraries. Get that trash out and focus on STEM and patriotic history and the Bible.
As an aside, I have to wonder if the parents involved in this discussion are aware of the internet and have a handle on their children’s access to it. Maybe that’s next on the list to tackle.
Feathers
Local control of education and, perhaps more importantly, local funding of education is a major roadblock towards both improving education and reducing inequality in America. I went to a white minority public high school and got a great education there. When I got to New England for college, I met a lot of fellow students who had left my city when they got old enough to go to the racially mixed schools. It was tough to process, then and now.
Racism is a huge and pervasive problem. One of the big issues in dealing with it is that it doesn’t respond well to be confronted directly. In fact, that usually makes things worse and more entrenched. My solution to dealing with people saying racist shit is to call them out for being an asshole (because they invariably are). They can deal with that and will often even acknowledge that. Then, I call them out for being kindof a racist asshole. When anybody asked me how not to be racist, I tell them don’t be greedy (structural racism) or an asshole (interpersonal racism). That takes care of at least 95% of the problem.
It’s the same thing in education. We need better schools. Period. We need more resources for the kids who are further behind. We need to provide that. All schools within a school district need to provide equal services. Some exemptions for specialized schools, but on a tight leash. The federal government needs to provide funding for the physical building of schools in high and medium poverty areas. The Department of Education needs to have resources available for local school districts in terms of curriculum and management issues.
Sigh.
narya
@Woodrow/asim: FWIW, I truly appreciate your analyses and comments.
James E Powell
We talk about suburban (white) moms more than dads because it is believed that they are gettable for Democrats. Suburban (white) dads are just not going to move off of white supremacy/patriarchy.
These moms are gettable -somewhat – on some issues. I recall the “security moms” of 2004 being a key to GWB’s re-election, but that may have been a narrative that was not backed up by facts.
The large group that I thought was gettable – but I was wrong wrong wrong again – was white women, no college.
Adam L Silverman
@Suzanne: I should have used sarc tags.
Cassandra
@Kay: The media beatdown of the Biden administration for leaving Afghanistan was amazing to see and anecdotally convinced one dem voter I know well to decide Biden was incompetent….
The Trump administration’s response to the pandemic was fantastically more incompetent…killing far more Americans. And received far from the same level on condemnation. It’s very confusing.
whomever
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Yeah, what you are describing in Rochester sounds sort of what I’d suspected. I have a friend who was working to improve education in a North Eastern Urban City (Not in NY state, and this city is somewhat known for corruption) and it was a sort of sad arc. She started out so excited and full of energy and when I saw her a few years later she was defeated. According to her basically all the high end school administrators were on the books twice and getting multiple salaries, it was impossible to fix anything and no one involved at the admin level really cared about anything except feathering their nest.
(For what it’s worth, my kid goes to a NYC public school).
Frankensteinbeck
Any mother who falls for Republican talking points is not one of these. Republicans have left ‘good schools’ subtle racist arguments behind. Their CRT freakout is specifically anti-good-schools, declaring that school content that might help children academically is unacceptable on the grounds of hurting fee fees. CRT is hardly a sudden change in their bigotry-over-education focus in school policy, either, it’s just got them unusually frothing at the mouth.
Adam L Silverman
@Cassandra: I’m pretty sure this has nothing to do with STEM.
Baud
@Kay:
VA is particularly susceptible to military issues.
laura
@Suzanne: Yikes! I get extremely anxious in the presence of white supremacist/meth heads – like bad contact high skin crawling panic. I’m guessing you paid up and hustled your family out of there pronto.
Suzanne
@MisterForkbeard: Before we left AZ, Spawn the Younger went to a bilingual immersion school. Same thing, large Latino population, mostly but not exclusively Mexican. I loved it. It is a public school, but an “opt-in” one with open enrollment. Just a great experience. I miss it a lot.
Woodrow/asim
So, that speech I just quoted from Dr. King? Here’s the part above it:
Dr. King was wielding a rhetorical sledgehammer his entire damn career; there’s a more-famous “white moderate” bit from “Letter [from] a Birmingham Jail,” arguably his first major written work.
Also arguably: he “failed” because it turned out there weren’t enough White people willing to actually push back on the people who felt their privilege being challenged, White people willing to be allies and advocates for this kind of rhetoric. His desire to be honest cost him a lot of support, but history has of course judged him to be right on many points (so far) — and perhaps even prescient, as his last book has him advocating for a Universal Basic Income!
We don’t need Progressive politicians being this honest, I think. Yet I’d advocate for a better balance then we usually get with these topics, one that is honest with people about the situation. One that honors the gaps between perception and reality. One that doesn’t talk down to any of the people involved.
This is part of why I keep saying these are issues that take communities of activists to tackle. If your engagement model around these issues isn’t learning from the people who’ve worked these issues for decades, I would be deeply concerned it’s doomed to irrelevance, at best.
Eduardo
@Starfish: Thank you — will read the source now. (What I read before was — to put it YouTube terms — a reaction.)
MisterForkbeard
@Suzanne: Same. Our kids had a really tough time due to covid (our older one was finishing up pre-K when Covid hit) as it’s really hard to learn a foreign language over zoom. But we love the school, and it’s a public school in our city with a great set of teachers and a ton of school spirit.
I love that my kids are exposed to other cultures this early. And both my kids are doing really well in Spanish (now), and reading to them has even managed to improve my and my wife’s accents. The whole thing has just been ducky once we moved past covid issues.
Suzanne
@Kent:
And parents of “median kids” know this and are really stressed about it. The thing is…. I get why they’re stressed about it. And they don’t think they’re being racist for being stressed about it, either.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Most days, I give less than a shit about hearts and minds. Schools are complex issues and there are lots of villains involved.
When I was a teen, there were a handful of brand new magnet schools in inner city neighborhoods with great teachers and a good student body, and supportive parents. Still, these schools were shunned by virtually all white parents. So the student body was almost exclusively black and Asian, with a few whites.
Years later, the neighborhood is largely Hispanic, with a significant black population. One school in particular, Crenshaw High, is so bad and the teachers so uninvolved, that the school loses its accreditation. Administrators and the teachers union do everything they can to hide the problem, and when things blow up, some teachers try to distract with the standard bullshit about how hard they try and how much they love the kids.
Here, obviously any parent with a brain and a heart would want their kid to be in a better school.
But income and race continue to be challenges.
Woodrow/asim
@narya: Thank you very much!
Cassandra
@Adam L Silverman: I should have used the sarc tag. To many parents I know, STEM is OK to learn but learning about queerness is not.
I get the impression that these people do not read any fiction (maybe Tom Clancy?). I think they’d be OK with not teaching lit at all.
West of the Rockies
@Woodrow/asim:
Well said and taken to heart.
I also maintain that art: literature, films, TV, music, stage plays, etc. can present ideas that can stick and effect change.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
Especially when they do racist things.
I don’t expect them to change. And they often seem to live down to my expectations.
To be clear, with Obama’s election, I saw many people make a clear choice and reject racism, even if it sometimes meant making a break with racist family members.
I also saw the rise of Trumpism. I had a coworker who lived in a city in Orange County California. He admitted that he and his father believed that the Democrats wanted to take everything that he had worked for and give it to undeserving blacks and Hispanics. Actual quote. Almost a parody of bigotry. In their minds, there simply were no hard working or deserving black or Hispanic people.
Kay
This trial is so bad. “I wonder why people don’t trust OUR INSTITUTIONS?” It’s a real mystery.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I just saw that. How is this real life.
Suzanne
@MisterForkbeard: The school that Spawn is going to here in PGH is a Title 1 school, so relatively poor. When I went to the Open House night a couple of weeks ago, I asked every single teacher I found if they had enough resources and all of them said, “Oh yeah, we have tons of resources!!!”. I will donate and buy stuff, and none of them wanted anything! In AZ, they begged us to donate paper and tissues and hand sanitizer, FFS. What a culture shock.
PJ
@Cassandra: The media ganged up on Biden about Afghanistan far more than they did about Trump and his handling of Covid, even though Biden’s airlift saved 100,000 people, with no American casualties, and Trump’s actions and inactions led to the deaths of several hundred thousand Americans. For people who don’t follow the news or politics closely, even if they agree that the US should have gotten out of Afghanistan, they are certain the Biden fucked it up royally because that is what they media reiterated for weeks, in the most hysterical terms.
I don’t think it will be a factor, at all, three years from now, but it has contributed to the unwillingness of Manchin and Sinema to go along with Biden’s program now.
PJ
@Woodrow/asim:
There’s also a big difference between being an activist (or, in terms of MLK, a modern day prophet) and being a politician who can get elected. Rhetoric matters, and activists can and often should represent the truth no matter how gory, and no matter how many people reject it, but a politician has to sell a story to the whole electorate (or at least a majority of it) in a persuasive way.
Brachiator
@Woodrow/asim:
Good point and well said.
Flynn
You know, putting “white” in front of “women” doesn’t make your statement any less misogynistic.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can’t help but laugh because they go INSANE when anyone else’s phone rings. He’s bad. The judges demeanor sets the tone. The lawyers follow it. The prosecutors are being really aggressive because that’s a certain kind of person’s reponse to a bully judge. It works, too. It’s what bullies respect. It’s my response.
The courtroom is his. It reflects him. If it’s bad it’s him and if it’s good it’s him.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: And yet, I keep hearing from the media that the Judge is bending over backwards to make sure “public confidence” is with the trial. The white public, I guess.
Matt McIrvin
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Loomis’s response to this is “these people are all bad, you’re bad if you even want to win under these conditions, so we’re fucked, the end.” Which might be true but is not very useful.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe this is how the Matrix keeps us entertained.
SiubhanDuinne
@MisterForkbeard:
Earlier, during one of the times the judge sent the jury out of the courtroom and lambasted the prosecution, Andrea Mitchell was chuckling and smirking. They’re all such tools.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
I haven’t followed it up until today. I followed Trayvon Martin, all of it, and it broke my heart. I’m not doing it again. The judge will be a wingnut martyr too- you watch.
Peale
@Cassandra: If you want to know the truth, back in the good ol’ days of my youth, the most controversial book we read in High School was Catcher in the Rye. Although I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. But everything else modern I remember being quite dull. Well, o.k. I liked Where the Legends Die. But still. It was probably appropriate.
I bring this up because when I went to school, the NAEP achievement scores were low and falling and we had as a country spent a decade losing ground on test scores. So…maybe having books around that kids actually want to read might encourage more reading, which might include test scores.
WaterGirl
@Woodrow/asim:
You get it from me! And I’ll bet you get it from a whole lot of folks here.
geg6
@scav:
This. This. This.
As for K-12 kids and their educations, I have to say I am not impressed at all with the product produced by the schools that these parents all want their kids to go to. Not a little bit. They really aren’t getting all that great an education. At least, not that much better than the students who comes from the lowest performing high schools around here and, more often, much worse due to their entitled behavior, failure to demonstrate academic rigor and social isolation from all students different from themselves. As I often say in the office, give me a kid from the Pittsburgh Public Schools or Aliquippa High School with motivation over some snot from Fox Chapel or North Hills schools. Anyone from the Pittsburgh area knows the vast difference between the budgets and socioeconomic status of these high schools.
Over 30 years in higher ed has taught me that the rich kids will never do as well, will never be better people all around or benefit their communities the way the poor or working class kids who I worked with over those years will. I have seen it happen over and over and over and much more so over the last five years. The diversity of the lower budgeted schools pays off massively for these students in college and at college graduation. They know how to get along with and work with all kinds of people. They are resilient because they have had to overcome difficulties both in their educations and at home. They are persistent because, in general, they’ve had to be to get through high school and college.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, I would find the best possible schools in a district that isn’t too wealthy. Both of my nieces, one of them whose parents deliberately chose the district for its economic and racial diversity, went to these kinds of schools and have done very well for themselves. And you couldn’t give me enough cash to send a kid to an Ivy League school. What crap those schools are. The surveys of employers that is done every spring regarding what college’s grads are they most interested in hiring ends up with mostly public colleges and universities in the top 10. There is a reason for that and it’s not because Ivy grads would turn their noses up at the offered jobs. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s the employers turning their noses up at the entitled, unmotivated assholes that make up too much of the Ivies’ student body.
Unless the building is crumbling or it’s a charter school, chances are the poor district is doing as good or better a job of educating kids as the richest.
Barbara
It’s especially easy right now to scare morhers. As hard as it might be, when it comes to people’s kids the strategy has to be win/win. Your kids don’t lose when they become part of something bigger. All three of my kids speak Spanish because a public school district took that concept to heart and ran with it.
West of the Rockies
@MisterForkbeard:
What evidence these people point to? I’ve only heard of his pro-defence comments and rulings (victim no, rioters yes).
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
I’m sure they’ll point to the same evidence. See, when the judge bends over backward to help the defense, it’s not because he wants to help the defense. It’s that he wants to reassure the public that if there’s a conviction it’s because the prosecution proved their case, not because the judge put his thumb on the scale.
Feathers
@geg6: In the mixed race city where I grew up there were many white parents who sent their kids to the local elementary, pulled them out and then returned when it came time to go to the local high school, which had plenty of AP classes. Not so much when I was there, but by the time my kid sister came along, it was a thing. Her best friend actually was a better student in elementary school, but her private middle school drained all ambitions and expectations out of her and she was a boy crazy twit who complained math was hard and barely made it into one of the non-competitive state colleges. Sis went to a 1.5 tier school, majored in computer science and has done OK for herself.
Private schools can be a total mess.
Feathers
@Barbara: A great deal of this is because of inequality. People are terrified of their kids not launching well. Hard not to sympathize.
The whole Clinton/Obama get a good education so you can have a good job did a lot of damage because two things people heard when they said that. 1) It’s OK to give people who didn’t go to college shitty jobs and treat them like scum. It’s their fault because they didn’t go to college. 2) People who went to college are elitist monsters who hate you and your children.
gvg
@whomever:
Charter schools are different in different states. I haven’t heard much good about them in Florida. The thing I think that makes them unlikely to do any good, is the state promised not to audit them. They get money and don’t have to account for it. Tell me how that will result in anything other than grift, eh? The other thing is that here, they were clearly intended to give money to religious schools without getting stopped by separation of church and state. I regard them as crooks from the get go.
I have read descriptions of other states that are completely different, from us and each other. That is the problem of talking about charter schools nationally. Its a word that does not mean a specific thing.
They need to go in Florida. I’d start by auditing them every year, change that law. I bet most would immediately close. Even if they started out honest, a loophole like that would corrupt them pretty fast.
Barbara
@Feathers: In many places private schools are for kids who can’t navigate public schools. They need too much spoon feeding. I sent one of my kids to a private school when she wouldn’t take responsibility for herself. After one year she told me she didn’t want to be pushed and coddled like that and begged to go back. She’s now a structural engineer. The level of fear so many exhibit about the future is hard to see.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Something else to consider; the entire news is based on fear. Endless speculation on what’s the worst possible thing happening. Heck, right now they have my mother upset about a comet that won’t even get inside the orbit of Jupiter. These women are the audience for this so CRT is just latest thing they are told to be afraid of.
UncleEbeneezer
Question for White Suburban Moms (and people with experience with them): do they view Critical THINKING as a good thing? Because that is absolutely something our side can lean into on messaging when it comes to curricula/schools. Greater diversity, cultural competence and all these books that the GOP wants to ban will actually help your child develop critical thinking skills that they will need for success at SAT’s, college and the workforce/life.
I dunno, just thinking out loud here…
Geminid
@Kay: I can see how the Afghanistan withdrawal may have shifted a few points away from McAuliffe for a while, but that’s an effect that I would expect to snap back after a couple weeks. Media coverage of Afghanistan dropped like a stone once the withdrawal was over, and even the talk radio blowhards I sample moved on to other more current issues. I guess it’s possible some of Virginia’s large military population may have held a grudge and taken it out on McAuliffe.
I’ve heard that other polls show McAuliffe support sagging after Republicans launched negative ads using McAuliffe’s words at the second debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.”
In the context of the larger answer, this made some sense. When McAuliffe appeared on Meet the Press the Sunday before Election Day, he pointed out that the debate audience clapped when he said it. He was being defensive, though.
Despite the applause, the Youngkin campaign had an ad up with McAuliffe saying this by midnight debate night, and were running TV ads the next day. Rightly or wrongly, the statement played right into a Youngkin narrative about education that was substantively deficient but had enough emotional power to win some voters.
That was a close race whose result depended on several factors. This McAuliffe campaign alumnus seems to lay it on Afghanistan and Joe Biden. That may be because he wants to erase his boss’s mistakes, and draw attention away from the question, “Was this campaign really that crappy?!”
Barbara
@scav: Yeah, those were the kids who had money to buy drugs and the wheels to go where drugs were being offered.
sab
My seven year old autistic grand-daughter finally got to start school this year in person. She is loving it. Of course the usual colds and such of childhood, each of which is terrifying until not Covid. Yesterday she had a fever so she had to stay home and she was furious. “My clothes are already laid out. I have friends!” Not the stereotypical response we are supposed to expect from autistic kids. Ohio Mom and Kay are right. These kids need to be in school. We are in an urban school, medium sized city. They seem to be better at special needs and minorities than the suburbs or the big cities.
Barbara
@UncleEbeneezer: Not to mention that SATs are less and less significant.
sab
@Geminid: Being in a lower middle class neighborhood in a medium sized city I know a lot of families whose kids were in the military. I do not know one family that was not totally fucking relieved when we left Afgjanistan. Repeated deployments there have been terrifying for the families and damaging for their service members.
Brachiator
@sab:
That is so sweet.
CAM-WA
Framing this as an issue about “suburban white WOMEN (emphasis added!)” is both sexist and inaccurate. In my experience, suburban white MEN are just as concerned about their Jason’s and Jennifer’s SAT scores, and just as eager to keep their kids away from “bad influences” (which somehow…ha! disproportionally seem to be kids of color) as their white, suburban wives.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Like the 2016 election, it looks to me like it really was a combination of several factors, but the biggest one being juiced GOP turnout which may have been unavoidable. They were probably amped for a win (coming off the CA recall blowout) the same way we were in 2018.
UncleEbeneezer
@CAM-WA: The reason people are using that framing is because the women are much more likely to vote Dem than white men. And they were the reliable voting block that gave us so many victories from 2017 on.
sab
@Brachiator: Her school, like the rest of our district, is fully masked. Her mask came home dirty. Mom asked why. She said ” I had to take it off to show my two adult teeth growing in up front.”
sab
@CAM-WA: In my kids’ school district the druggies are almost all but not entirely white. Black kids will lead your kids into sports and church.
PJ
@Eduardo: Apologies for my misreading of your comment, I see we are on the same page on this subject.
sab
@sab: They wete heartsick but relieved. All these frightening years for what point?
Geminid
@sab: You’re right. But I know that many if not most people who actually served were relieved when we left Afghanistan, and that’s why I said “possibly some” of Virginia’s large military population may have taken it out on McAuliffe. But the effect of this issue on the Virginia election would still be minimal. National defence and foreign affairs matter less in Virginia’s state elections than in federal ones, even though it is home to a lot of service members and a big chunk of the military-industrial complex.
sab
@sab: Also. My hairdresser went to Rita Dove’s high school and is her age, as am I. After twenty years knowing him I asked if he knew her. He said “Yes, of course. I carried her schoolbooks home. She lived near me. She asked where my books were. I said in my locker, where they belonged.”
PST
@Starfish: Thank you for the citation to the Derrick Bell paper, which I had never read. Bell was, of course, as much the founder of critical race theory as anyone, applying the methods of the critical legal studies school directly to how the law treats race. This paper is a perfect example of how CRT made its mark. It is a response to a distinguished scholar’s claim that Brown v. Board of Education lacks a satisfactory basis in neutral principles. Bell makes short shrift of the idea that supposedly impartial legal doctrines have much to do with Brown. He identifies ways in which, in the fifties, the interests of white elites converged for a time with those of Black parents, mentioning specifically ways in which the persistence of de jure segregation hurt the U.S. in its competition with the Communist Bloc, threatened unrest among Black Americans (especially returning veterans), and stood in the way of modern economic development in the southern states. So at that moment of converging interest, voila, legal doctrines emerged to meet the need. Eventually the main interest at stake for judges to keep pressing enforcement of Brown was to stand up to defiant whites simply in order to uphold judicial and federal supremacy. When the political cost of doing so became too high, legal doctrine again emerged to do the job of allowing real desegregation to remain unaccomplished. There is more to the paper than that, but it is a perfect example of what emerging CRT was all about — cutting through the illusion of neutral legal formalism to show how clashes of interest were steering outcomes. Nothing could be further from the monster invoked by those who now shout down an imaginary version of CRT. One irony is that those who decry CRT the most constantly proclaim belief in its central premise that the law reflects the interests of the established elite.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Virginia Republicans certainly were hungry. And they were unusually united. They had a nominating process that finessed the tensions between the tradional and radical wings, and produced the nominee with enough money to buy allies in both wings. Youngkin also made a shrewd choice when he made education a principal issue. The specter of CRT rallied the radical base like abortion or guns would have, without costing as many votes.
It’s easy to underrate Youngkin as a politician, and I think a lot of people do. He is a very slick man, and apparently was a good retail campaigner who spent a lot of time “on the hustings.” His campaign had a sound strategy that it executed well. Still, I think this was a winnable race for McAuliffe.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: one thing I read was that there was a significant difference between his on-line campaign (very trumpy) and his TV ads (non-trumpy). We’re (we being the internet left, what pre-twitter we called the blogosphere) so on-line and so engaged we sometimes, often in fact, forget how many people base their votes on the most superficial considerations. I’m sure a lot of Biden>Youngkin voters check Facebook every day, but never saw Youngkin’s online campaign. They were looking at their friends baby or vacation pictures or whatever
cmorenc
@FourSeasonsMisterMix:
This is spot-on true – I had the same concerns myself years back, when my older daughter was in first grade attending an elementary school in our own neighborhood a safe 5 minute unchaperoned walk f(and nearly within eyesight) rom our house, and the Wake County NC (Raleigh) School board proposed, in the name of racial rebalancing in the schools, redistricting us to a different school nearly a couple of miles away across several high-traffic major commuter streets. Also, the other school was in a neighborhood having a significantly lower percentage of parents with college educations and nearly 50% nonwhite student population. I did visit the proposed other school with as open a mind as I could summon, given the inherently more burdensome commute it would entail, but it was plain to my eyes from the visit that getting a good academic foundation for my daughter at the other school would also be more of an uphill challenge than in the school within walking distance.
I showed up at the School Board Meeting, and recall using my allotted brief speaking time to make two points: 1) it’s ridiculous to move kids living within 5 minutes walking distance from a school in their own neighborhood where your kid could safely walk to school, to an unfamiliar school two miles away; 2) BTW school board peeps, I VOTE, and I’ll remember what you do. After roughly 50 like-minded parents from my local neighborhood similarly spoke up more angrily than I did, the school board backed down and revised the district lines enough to keep kids within plausible walking distance in our neighborhood in their neighborhood school
HERE’S THE IRONY: Our neighborhood school already had a substantial minority / disadvantaged population bussed in for racial balance (figures on the percentage of kids with free lunch proved it). NO ONE from our neighborhood protested or resented these outside kids being brought into our local school or neighborhood, because there were enough highly involved parents supporting high achievement by their kids in our school’s population that we felt the kids brought in from outside were no threat to our kids’ success. OF COURSE, we did understand that these other kids bussed in were daily undertaking similar-distance commutes that had been proposed for us – but, not our problem so long as the school board leaves out school alone
LONG-TERM: our two daughters succeeded in the education sweepstakes – one of them went on to attend Davidson and went to medical school and is an anesthesiologist, the other graduated from UNC-W and got a B.S. in nursing. Would they have turned out educationally as well had they gone to the other distant elementary school? Frankly, I’m glad we never had to find out the answer to that question.
Call me racist if you wish, but the true dynamic was not wanting to handicap our kids by sending them to a bad school a long distance away from the nearby neighborhood school.
sab
@Brachiator: You think it is sweet. She thinks it is an outrage she stayed home.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m in a small radio market and I don’t watch TV, so I don’t think I caught so many ads from either side. I remember a lot of Youngkin ads in the summer that consisted of a Sheriff with a good Sheriffy drawl talking about how Virginians could not trust McAullife to support law enforcement, or to keep Virginians safe either. McAuliffe’s ads did not seem to turn up until September.
Right before the election the Youngkin campaign pivoted to an ad with him earnestly addressing the cost of living, and how Virginia’s families need the repeal of the tax on groceries he proposes. That was like a political aikido move, what with McAulliffe pounding the issue of trump and talking about racist “dogwhistles.” I can see some suburban lady wondering, “how is cutting the grocery tax a dogwhistle?… And is he calling me a dog?!”
Darkrose
@Woodrow/asim:
It’s exhausting.
One of the main takeaways I’ve had from working on the library strategic plan is that the DEI and anti-racism work too often end up as additional unpaid labor on the shoulders of people from marginalized communities. These discussions are tiring, especially for those of us who’ve been having them for most of our lives.