Neighborhood schools in Seattle? Fuggedaboudit. Put too many minority students in a Seattle school, and why, they're pretty much doomed to failure. To succeed academically, minority students need to be around a healthy percentage of white students. Praise diversity, pass the WASLs, and uh, lots of "alternatives" to the WASLs.
This reigning crock of not-so-subtly racist condescension received a boost yesterday. The L.A. Times has more (free reg. may be req.): the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court and upheld Seattle Public Schools' "racial tiebreaker," which opponents now say they'll appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The tiebreaker holds that if space is limited in a desired school, assignments are made first on sibling attendance; then racial balancing; and THEN, residential proximity of the student to the school. Race-based social engineering comes before neighborhood ties.
Another approach is diversity quotas by income level, but the same fatal premise holds there, as well. Change, and modelling, must come from within the family. The root issue in low academic performance by black students is often absent fathers and a culture of out-of-wedlock births. With low-performing Hispanic students, major issues can include parents uncommitted to the assimilation process, and gang membership. Yet Asians, on the whole, perform better than white students at almost every grade level and in every subject, as often shown in standardized test scores in Seattle Public Schools, and elsewhere.
Is their success due to being around white kids? I think not. It comes from old-fashioned family values: hard work, expectations, and consequences. Things that have all but gone out the window, as statist bureaucrats seek to invent palliative interventions to family problems.
SPS says it hasn't decided yet whether or not to reinstate the racial tiebreaker, which has been on hold during extended legal proceedings. The district should drop it altogether; standardize the curriculum at a much higher level; and get on the soapbox about parenting, instead. And if we really want the "school choice" which Seattle's beloved racial shuffling policy is half-heartedly meant to help promote, there will have to be public charter schools. Which can only come back to life with stronger support - next time around - from minority-group constituencies, to guide charters through the shark-infested waters of the legislative process. And through the now-inevitable referendum challenge to charters by the Washington Education Association, a group far more interested in job security than the pursuit of excellence.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at October 21, 2005 10:01 AM | Email ThisThe sooner we move away from platitudes of diversity, and other codewords for institutional racism, the sooner we see more success for all.
Posted by: Jeff B. on October 21, 2005 10:56 AMMost school boards are run by folks who are significantly left of center. If they teach the little darlings -- of whatever skin color -- to read and write and compute and think logically and critically... they're no longer masses of useful idiots. They'd question propaganda. And they'd not likely vote Democrat, would they?
Posted by: TB on October 21, 2005 11:45 AMWhen liberals say anything about race it is diversity.
Ya' gotta love it.
Posted by: JCM on October 21, 2005 12:08 PMIn reality, these people want fewer fathers around, not more. Look throughout gender feminist literature and you will see that they believe that having a father around is destructive and that kids will grow up better adjusted if the father is not around.
Both common sense and scholarly research indicate the opposite. But, when feminist ideology is running the show, reality goes out the window.
So, don't wait around for these people to get on a soapbox pushing for people to be better parents.
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on October 21, 2005 01:05 PMAbout 15 years ago I did a study of the allocation of funds across elementary schools in the Seattle school district and the results showed very clearly that the more white children there was in the school the more money it got. Further inspection of the data showed that this was largely due to differences in teacher salaries. Basically minority schools tended to get beginning or failed teachers whereas the majority schools got the experienced teachers. And I think that alone is a very good reason for the parents of black children to want to get them into the majority schools. There isn't any need to think that it's so they can hang out with white children.
I believe the solution is to pay teachers more, a lot more, to teach in minority schools.
Posted by: ronsch99 on October 21, 2005 01:24 PMBy any chance do you think it may be because the teachers union runs on seniority. The more senior the more choice you have on where you teach. The schools are so disrespected in the poorer areas, and parents care even less in those areas that teaching is the pinacle of unbearable in these schools. So teachers ask to get assigned away from there. It has nothing to do with the color of the children, but the attitude of the school administration and the parents. Just because two numbers are going in the same direction does not mean that they are corrolated.
Posted by: fred on October 21, 2005 01:48 PMThis is an issue that the teachers don't like to talk about much. It came up a couple of years ago when a report came out making pretty much the same point I did, but I didn't hear about anything happening from it. Teachers seem to be able to talk about anything else to improve things other than the issue of where they can teach. I'm a liberal Democrat with sympathies for unions, but this is an issue I think the teacher's unions need to get straightened out on. It's simple, dramatically increase the pay of teachers at the difficult schools. Their union won't like that very much though. It'll mean that teachers who like to get by at the easy schools are going to get paid a lot less than those working hard at difficult schools.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on October 21, 2005 03:34 PMThe reason black children generally do better in white majority schools is because those schools get more money, more resources, and better teachers not because they need to hang out with white children. In other words integration is about white racism not about any purported diversity or "racist condescension" effect.
One has to be careful when one looks at the difference between one complex organism and another (such as schools). While it is a logical inference that because there is higher paid teachers and better equipment at one school that is succeeding verses another school that is not, you make a grave error to assume then that it must be true. In fact, there have been studies that show student performance is not predicated upon per-pupil spending. More money appears NOT to be the deciding factor. It is possible that what you see as a cuase is really an effect. A school with well behaved children with full family support will generally have better performing students, and may then impact the quality of educators who apply to teach there. Which causes which?
Now, I do not think it is fair to force parents to send their children to schools that are sub-par educationally, and are overrun by ill-disciplined kids. No matter how one slices it, any quota system that forces kids to attend one school or at least prevents them from attending the desired school is inherently unfair. You can read this to say that any public school system that has mandatory school assignments might be construed to be unfair.
Basically what it comes down to is that any family has as much right to send their children to a good school as any other family. Unfortunatley, the rich fmailies have the option of private schools if they do not like the public ones, and the families that are poor do not have that oprion and also do not have the option of relocating to a better district nor in transporting their children to a different school. To correct that, problem, the governemnt decided to prefer the poor (though really by race as a substitute for poor) by giving them preference to a good school and displacing poor (though not racially preferred under the system) to go to other schools.
You have not solved any real educational problems because you still have the same poor schools and the same poorly supported children and the same lack of discipline.
The only program that will be fair to all families is to allow any family to choose either the public or private school of thier choice regardless of economic status. But unfortunatley, school choice is an unamerican concept and thus is vehemently opposed by all true "americans" (of the civil liberty union type, anyway.)
Students will not succeed because of the money spent on the school but rather by the support from the family and the motivation of the student and the access to good educational environment free from social pressures.
This "diversity" dogma is not the answer. The funny thing is, while all these whitey's are trying to integrate blacks, the blacks in places such as college spend all their time forming all black social groups saying that they feel more comforatble if they are with those who are more "like" them.
You will note, if you read my post carefully, that I refered only to elementary schools. Secondary schools are a different ball game. I'm not going to claim that I know anything about fixing high schools. I should mention that my oldest daughter who got a B.A. from Oberlin and a Ph.D. from Temple, attended a high school (Bethesday-Chevy Chase in Maryland) which was about 40% nonwhite mostly bussed in. BCC was an exciting place to learn and it gave her the chance to get into Oberlin that she might not have had somewhere else. Her experience with the black kids was generally very good, and interestingly she's a tenured professor at the oldest black college in the U.S., Cheney College near Philadelphia. So I don't think you can conclude that bussing in a lot of black kids is necessarily going to ruin a school.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on October 21, 2005 03:47 PMUnless she took a degree in the PURE sciences, engineering, medicine or the like, a Ph.D. from Temple was easily accomplished so long as she was willing to surrender her brain entirely to the catechism of the radical liberal establishment. Especially as a white female. Likewise given those limits, her status as a professor at Cheney College means nothing more than that she is a willing propagandist of the radical liberal faith. You want to be proud--do it with your liberal friends, the rest of us know better. Your daughter is more than likely another bad joke just like you.
At any rate, your comments reveal absolutely nothing useful about the subject at hand. Racial tiebreakers are tools of explicit racism and anyone--even someone as dim-witted as you are--should have the sense to recognize it. No surprise though. Such methods unmitigated as intended by their most cynical proponents, and your daughter would never be hawking elite liberal indoctrination.
Thanks once again for demonstrating you're narcissistic arrogance masquerading as academic verisimilitude.
Women, blacks and other minorities have made great strides in the last 40 years, but all of that was viciously fought against by the angry white male supporters of Reagan/Gingrich/Bush/et al. bent on preserving their access to wealth, jealously guarding their dominance. The conservative angry white male is the true narcissist who doesn't care about anything else except that which affects them. Liberals are "bleeding hearts" empathizing with the plight of others.
Affirmative action has mostly been taken off the table, but the problems remain and new tactics must be brought on the table. I challenge you conservatives to step up and propose strategies that are going to solve the problems wrought by racism, past and present. I suspect this is a hopeless call however. The racist angry white males simply don't care about anyone other than their own.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on October 22, 2005 10:33 AMPeople who believe that affirmative action accomplished anything "good" is either a moron, or a race pimp (or both).
Liberals are "bleeding hearts" leeching off the plight of others - there, I fixed your post in order to make it factual!
The racist angry recipients of forty years of liberal entitlements simply don't care about anyone other than their own.
See, I knew we weren't so far apart in our thinking ;'}
Busing and desegregation are useless bandaids. It would be better if black communities dropped the values of affirmitive action and welfare. Those are values that cloud over their need for a stronger family structure to survive.
Black churches would be better to focus on family than racism, boy scouts girl scouts etc. anything that lends itself to creating educational values.
Police need to press those communities less on drug issues and let them self police. The black community needs a few more leaders like Bill Cosby and a few less like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton
Responsibility is what counts.
Posted by: holt on October 22, 2005 04:45 PMThe ”secret” clue you refer to is no secret--except to those like you. Affirmative action is racism pure and simple.
A person as completely blinded by indoctrination as you are is humorous to review. Maybe you can cite your daughter
as "everyperson," of the year even though she is the epitome of the very evil you profess. Who's clueless?
Given your predilections, I am glad that you (believe) you are lined up for the inevitabilities coming your way.
You and your ilk are openly demonstrating that you are nearly done anyway.
Bye . . .
But maybe I am being too cruel. I would feel bad if that were so, even if we disagree. At some point you stopped thinking and made a rigid assumption that has become your religious faith about conservative white males. It almost sounds like childhood trauman. I am sorry if that is the case for you.
You see, you do become exactly what you hate, unless you have some type of faith in a higher power. That pyschological principle exists in all major thought process. I would suggest you search out some white conservative males as friends. you will have crossed a great communications chasm then and set a good example for a lot of people. Otherwise you are the lonely voice on the ledge people can't seem to hear. sorry sorry.. i am being cruel again. I usually backspace that crap out, but I will leave it there as penance.
Posted by: holt on October 23, 2005 02:52 AMIt seems that you are making an assumption (out of a sense of fairplay) that Raunchy has the capability of making simple distinctions. He sounds like a bigot simply because he is one. You say aptly, "At some point you stopped thinking and made a rigid assumption that has become your religious faith about conservative white males." I say he never actually started thinking; just parroting unexamined emotion-based inanities.
Radical liberals like Raunchy are deeply religious because their ideology is rooted in blind faith. Only the most extreme trauma can ever wake someone like him out of his fugue state of witling liberalism. So why bother trying? Because in the mean time, he provides an excellent example of the utter arrogant irrationality of his all too common view.
Raunchy argues that his daughter went to a school that had bussed-in blacks and [he says] she turned out O.K. . . .
therefore Seattle's racially bigoted tiebreaker system is a good thing?
Who’s clueless?
Affirmative action is a case in point. I agree that most affirmative action is not required now. But it did serve its purpose in its time. The reason that it seems racist to conservatives (the angry white males) is because they couldn't get past their own situation to see what the situation was for blacks. In the 60's the situation was very bad for blacks. They had no access to good schools, to good jobs because of racist policies. But simply saying that now things are going to be equal doesn't solve the problem. It's like a race in which all blacks were required to wear 40 pounds of extra weight. If you all of a sudden tell them to drop their weights without accounting for the fact that they're way behind because of the weights, then blacks in the middle of race are severely disadvantaged making it many more years before things are really equal. Affirmative action, imperfect as it was, worked. Blacks and women brought themselves up in society over the last 40 years or so.
But some conservatives aren't able to get that point. The fact that all these angry white males have a built-in advantage doesn't seem to occur to them, and, since they can only see what is affecting them, they freak out about the government wanting to take that built-in advantage away from them.
Being able to see that point is the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives can only see things from their point of view and they jealously guard their privileged position. Liberals can see things from other's points of view and are willing to make accomodation.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on October 23, 2005 03:05 PMFor you to make so careless and wanton accusations reveals a truly deep seated hatred.
Get yourself some counseling!
Posted by: alphabet soup on October 23, 2005 04:46 PMBut then, you already knew that ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on October 23, 2005 05:09 PMThe principle of assumption is what you are talking about when seeing things through other peoples eyes. It is a valuable tool. You would be in error if you think it is a liberal type of thing.
Conservatives want people to be responsible for themselves, Liberals want to be responsible for other people. one path is being free, one path is being a slave.
Posted by: holt on October 23, 2005 05:30 PMBetter, "conservatives are individually responsible, liberals are collectively responsible".
Or, "conservatives care only about themselves, liberals care about others".
But the real point is that it's easy for white males to insist on individual responsibility because that operates to their advantage. It's tough for a woman with a couple of kids whose husband has abandoned her to get by. Liberals want to help solve her problem by making sure there's no discrimination in the workplace against her and that there's day care for her children. Conservatives (mostly white male) on the other hand feel it's her responsibility and that she has to accept it. But liberals believe that it was someone else's failure of responsibility, and that she needs help. Conservatives on the other hand are unconcerned -- she's a welfare mother or she's black and therefore why care?
The conservative "individual responsibility" is creating a very bad situation for ordinary working people. The tax cuts for the wealthy is producing a bountiful economy for the rich, but not for the ordinary working person. Salaries for working people have declined consistely during the Bush administration and this will continue. There are millions who can't afford health care insurance, and many even with insurance are being bankrupted by health problems. And the Bush administration has clamped down on bankruptcy for ordinary people (not big companies though) that will leave millions in desperate situations that were not their fault.
Now that's conservative individual responsibility at work -- screw working people, but make corporations responsible, forget it. It's ok for corporations to loot the worker's pension plans and then go chapter 11 and break their commitments to workers, but let some family that's losing everything because their kid has some rare disease and conservatives say its their responsibility and they have to live with it.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on October 24, 2005 09:19 AMEnjoy your wretched life of hatred ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on October 24, 2005 09:35 AMMores the pity....
Posted by: alphabet soup on October 24, 2005 12:03 PMIf you looks at blacks from Jamaica or women from Asia, you would see they succeed on their own merits time and time again. See previous note about growing a culture.
The men and women you are refering to as needing help, need a confidence push in one direction. And they have to want it. As long as they live in a minimist victims culture, misery will love their company. First step out, is to attend a church. Second step is to focus on education.
Women with children who are homeless do need some long term help of at least three years. Too much of the homeless effort is spent on single men who take no responsiblity for themselves.
A small business focus in the country is needed to make a stronger middle class. Family farms are biting the dust to agri business.
Liberals collective care is to tell someone else they know what is best for them. In the realm of the mind, that is a losing proposition. People learn best by following good examples. Collective care is like the Maoist Tai Tai committees. or the borg. The borg are all happy in their communist state. Best to destroy that type of group.
Posted by: holt on October 24, 2005 07:32 PMI'm not opposed to your ideas. There's a lot of discussion on the left about these issues, and many of them are articulating just those ideas you've brought up.
The problem is that families on incomes less than $30,000 are increasing in number and their income is declining under the Republicans. And any kind of help for these people is not under discussion by the Republicans or conservatives. Their solution of cutting taxes for the wealthy is doing well for the wealthy, but is not helping the non-wealthy. This is the same thing that happened when Reagan tried it. The Republicans like it because it's great for them, but they are blind to what is happening to everyone else. So this gets us back to my point. Conservatives and Republicans only care about themselves. This group is made up mainly of white males and I am claiming that their inability to perceive the situation of people who are not white and not male is racist and sexist. And I'd also add classist. George Bush is clueless about the circumstances of ordinary working people. He gets it honestly -- Cf. Barbara Bush's comments about New Orleans refugees being better off.
Blacks and women are doing better these days, and this is because of affirmative action. We need some new ideas though and we should let affirmative action (mostly) go. However, conservatives don't have any new ideas for this problem. They only can see their own white male situation. Instead they oppose ideas to solve problems due to racism and sexism. And that is another reason why conservatism is fundamentally racist. Conservative policies mainly benefit white males. They want to force women to bear children against their will -- male conservatives don't get pregnant so why do they care? They enthusiastically supported Bush's waiver of the Davis-Bacon act in hurricane affected areas which disproportionately affects black workers -- conservatives are making decent wages, why should they care if a lot of black workers are now going to be forced to work for the poverty wages of less than $18,000 a year. I could go on and on but I think you should be able to get the drift.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on October 25, 2005 12:30 PMYep, we get it that you're a racist with a sick and severely limited view of the world.
I change my mind - I no longer pity you, I just shake my head and wonder how anyone so bone-jarringly stupid could get so far in this world.
You're quite a piece of work there raunchy!
Posted by: alphabet soup on October 25, 2005 05:22 PMAmerican Constitutional Republicanism; the most successful cultural and economic system that has ever existed in the history of the world both establishes and finances the very well being that allows pea-brained indolent dumb-asses like Raunchy the luxury to pretend they know how it works, and how to “FIX” it.
Lasting economic and social freedom can never be achieved through racial or any preferences except the universal preference of individual liberty without regard to race affording everyone to do for themselves. I owe no one anything based on my race and neither does anyone else. Many of my forbears fought and some died to make this be so, (just as many negros did) but that avails me of no privelege any more than the taint of slavery to a negro provides them one, nor should it. Morons like Raunchy stood on the side of the South (and slavery) during the Revolutionary war, the Civil War, and current racist schemes because they are too dim witted to acknowledge the simple truth:
Racism is racism; just - don't - allow - it. Play fair and get beyond it.
Raunchy argues that affirmative action worked. So did slavery, National Socialism (Nazism), and Soviet Communism, but there are far better alternatives. Liberalism is an insidious nihilistic dogma that defies reason while it pretends to explicate it, and Raunchy's comments demonstrate it.
You say (practically in the same sentence!) "If we had equity in our schools, I'd say okay but we don't."
Which would imply a desire for equity. Good enough.
But then you say; "But I have been a district watcher for a long time and we need diversity in schools or we will be worse as a district and as a city."
So you want "equity" (conformity, uniformity, similarity) and "diversity" (variety, difference, mixture)? At the same time? Are you trying to punish these kids?!
No wonder liberals can't figure out if they're coming or going!
At any rate, whatever the "merits" or your position, your idea of giving any validity to the notion of using race as a excuse to discriminate should be abhorrent - why are you not cringing?!
Posted by: alphabet soup on October 25, 2005 10:41 PMGood job of ignoring reality. You are just like Raunchy.
Raunchy is the type of person who because he may be a Negro, emotionally retarded, intellectually stunted, and largely incapable of productive activity believes that it is appropriate to throw the blame for his condition on others. Abnormalities are remediable, enforced invincible ignorance is not. The key here is that he specifically selects the only condition of the aforementioned that is impossible for him (or anyone else for that matter) to change. He chooses race because it is a useful tool through which he can exploit guilt in his fairy-tale world of the "haves-and-the-have-nots."
Being abnormal, Raunchy believes that because I am a Caucasian who pursues productive activity for my own benefit that I should be considered inordinately "socially advantaged" rather than just normal--unlike him. Further, he asserts a supposed position of moral superiority on the basis of his charade status of victim-hood in order to offset his refusal to attempt to improve his own condition. Therefore, within his characteristic liberal standing of victim-hood lays the justification for him to seize the fruits of my labor to satisfy his refusal to accept responsibility for his own life.
Arguments ad-infinitem about past racism, slavery, and other inequities are utterly irrelevant unless one presumes that the early "liberal" foundation of our social and economic systems must be entirely repudiated. Social claims of inequities passed on from generation to generation if enforced, would amount to the equivalent concept behind aristocracy and monarchy; that is, that each person's natural individual rights to life liberty and property must be subordinated to the exclusive rights accorded elites; those based solely on genetics, lineage, and/or heredity. Thus would arise a new elite; indolent, arrogant, emotionally retarded, intellectually stunted, and largely incapable of productive activity (except to exploit the labors of others). In summary, an elite just like Raunchy.
For Raunchy to insist that he has the right to seize the fruits of my production on the basis of inheritor ship is fundamentally little different from the claims of King George III, or Saddam Hussein. Likewise, for him to claim that my son or daughter must be penalized on the basis of race--for any justification--is simply pure unadulterated bigotry.
As a malingering shameless liberal demagogue, Raunchy strikes a humorous posture so long as you don't think too carefully about what his assertions actually represent; the purest form of cynical exploitive racism that exists.