The
following post is a recent excerpt from one of our local education
listserves:
"I
grew up going to school in the (deep south) in the age of integration.
I am always so dumb founded how progressive attitudes are suppose
to be in California and how segregated California tends to be.....REALLY.
...think about it. Until we are willing to rub elbows with these
students and not demonize them we will never get the idea that
98% of them are harmless and at the very core they are just
like we were when we were in MS/HS all be it probably not as
wealthy."
As
a CA native I believe that here, particularly in liberal CA,
the situation is much more nuanced than what this individual
posted. Nobody IMHO would move to neighborhoods like SF, Oakland,
Pasadena, or Altadena if they really had a problem rubbing shoulders
with diversity. In fact, I'll submit that most were drawn to
these places in part for the benefits of diversity.
What
I do believe people have problems with is sending their kids
to a public school where the academic proficiencies are there
for all to see, perennially stuck among CA's bottom third, in
complete defiance of the urban public schools' chest-beating
about how their test scores are "on the march".
A
more interesting question might be: faced with the obvious fact
that differences in family readiness for academic success are
being overcome in at least a few CA public schools serving high
penetrations of low income students to the end that the academic
achievement gap between these (demographically at least) perennially
poor performers and CA's best is being closed consistently,
in all subjects, using the same, very well-documented educational
best practices, and is being done 4 out of 5 times with same
or lower per-student spending as PUSD, what in the world is
keeping PUSD from embracing those educational best practices?
Is
the problem an ignorance of these best practices? A little time
spent on the "Recommended Reading" section of http://www.altadena
schools.net/ index.htm could cure that problem. If educator
ignorance isn't the problem, what is? None of those high-performing
schools to low-income populations got there because their disenfranchised
community was banging on their educator's heads demanding best
practices. All started as alienated as the current PUSDville
population and were won over only by the educator's consistent,
year after year success winning back their community.
Could
the problem be that too many educators to low-income populations
are more interested in the daily benefits of an educator culture
that makes getting home to dinner on time and watching one's
"American Idol" and "Friends" re-runs a
greater priority than what some have called "the key civil
rights challenge of our generation" http://www.manhattan-institute.org/noexcuses/
? One can only shudder to think. Meanwhile
and like it or not, our middle class seemingly waits in the
wings, disgusted by what so many of our public educators are
doing to the diversity that drew so many to put down roots in
our communities in the first place.
