[Mpls] School discussion

[Michael Atherton]

Robert P. Goldman wrote: 
 
>  Once again, when anyone disagrees with him, Michael A decides to 
>  call that person a racist, and a segregationist.

Excuse me?

>  He doesn't seem to feel any desire to engage in answering my question
>  which was to ask "how do we get teachers to WANT to take on the
>  challenge of high-poverty schools?"  Name-calling meets his needs
>  more.

Maybe I didn't answer this question because it has an assumed 
premise that I don't agree with.  Personally, I don't think 
that WANTING is an absolute necessity in this situation.
I think that educating students irregardless of race should 
be a part of the job description.  

As to "name-calling," I never called anyone anything.  I tried
to point out that the structure, and certain parts of your
argument, have been used to perpetuate injustice in other 
situations, as I think they are here.

>  Nevertheless, I would still like to see some discussion of how
>  teachers could be made to want to take on this challenge.  

If, in the 1950s, we had waited until we could find a
way to make segregationists WHAT to take on the challenge
of integration we'd still be waiting.  Sometimes we have
to look back to the Bill of Rights and our fundamental
values and then enforce them.

>  And I'd like to see the school system do this by leveling 
>  UP, not leveling down.

Perhaps you should explain what this means and then propose
how to do it?

>  For what it's worth, our family uses a high-poverty school 
>  (Jefferson) that does have a cadre of teachers with a lot of team 
>  spirit, who seem to work together admirably well.  Saying this 
>  may lead to another outburst of name-calling from Michael A., 
>  but: it is this cohesive team of experienced teachers that I would 
>  fight to resist having be smashed and scattered to the winds.  
>  I see that Jefferson was omitted from Michael's statistics:
>  
>  total	hisp    af-am	white
>  575	296	180	70
>  	51%	31%	12%
>  
>  Average teacher years of experience, 11.9
>  
>  Although in the Uptown area, Jefferson has more than the average of
>  students eligible for free/reduced lunch, which makes it a
>  high-poverty school.
>  
>  This seems to suggest to me that it IS possible to have a 
>  school where teachers will want to stay, even when it's a 
>  high-poverty school.

The issue was not "high-poverty" schools.  The issue was whether
Black students in particular are provided with educational
services on par with Whites.  How is it then relevant to give
a single example of a school that is more than 50% Hispanic with 
a small White population.  One of the points I was trying to
make was that individual data points (schools) tend to distort
the picture and that you need to look at the general trend.
It also doesn't help to change the statistics you are reporting
in the middle of the discussion.  I was using "percentage of
teachers with more than 10 years of experience," not "average
teacher years of experience."  I'll include the same figures as
I was using for Jefferson below:

	         	    White	 Black	Years of Exp			
	        	   Students	Students	<3	>10			
						
JEFFERSON			11.8%	 31.1%	4.0%	53.0%	

This puts Jefferson somewhere in the middle of my analysis,
which means it is not going so significantly impact the
conclusion that Black students receive inferior services
compared to Whites.  You are welcome to analyze the figures
for Hispanics.  My guess is that the correlations for
Hispanics will not be as extreme as they are for Blacks, although
they will probably not be as good as those for Whites.  Once
again, the point of my argument is that the seniority system
results in poorer educational opportunities for African
American students and I think that the numbers clearly show
that it does. Can we please stay on the same topic? If you'd 
like to argue that the seniority system results in equitable 
educational opportunities for all races please be my guest.

Michael Atherton
Prospect Park