Other People's Children: North Lawndale and the South Side of Chicago
@anderscj
anderscj"if one knows the future that awaits them, it is terrible to see their eyes look up at you with friendliness and tr... http://t.co/UxHp9kPS
26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj"If we could simply learn 'what works' in Corla Hawkin's room, we'd then be in a position to repeat this all over C... http://t.co/PLA9b2Gi 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
Lets repeat that one because I think it directly addresses a wrong-headed supposition currently being bandied about the school reform water cooler:
"If we could simply learn 'what works' in Corla Hawkin's room, we'd then be in a position to repeat this all over Chicago and in every other system.
But what is unique in Mrs. Hawkin's classroom is not what she does but who she is. Warmth and humor and contagious energy cannot be replicated and cannot be written into any standardized curriculum. If they could, it would have happened long ago" Kozol
This reminds me of the video (I can't seem to find it now) I saw of KIPP founders discussing how KIPP schools came to be and how they developed their methods. In that video they said that while teachers with Teach for America they were working in a school with a teacher whose students were routinely successful. She made up chants to help the kids remember things for tests. That is how the KIPP chant came about. What KIPP set out to do was to replicate what was unique in this one teacher's classroom, to take it to scale. This may work for fact regurgitation but does it work for deep understanding of complex nuanced topics? Does it work for teaching kids to be great artists? Great critical thinkers? Self-motivated? I don't think so. Otherwise, this drama teacher's program would not have been buried with his retirement:
@anderscj
anderscj"The school board president in 1989, although a teacher and administrator in the system for three decades, did not ... http://t.co/92BitLLm 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj"The difference in spending between very wealthy suburbs and poor cities is not always as extreme as this in Illino... http://t.co/61PA1TbA 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
Lets repeat that because it echoes a point I was trying to make a few weeks ago on this blog, and one I will be returning to again very soon, about school funding here in Minnesota:
"The difference in spending between very wealthy suburbs and poor cities is not always as extreme as this in Illinois. When relative student needs, however, have been factored into the discussion, the disparities in funding are enormous. Equity, after all, does not mean simply equal funding. Equal funding for unequal needs is not equity." Kozol
@anderscj
anderscj"Most public schools in the United States depend for their initial funding on a tax on local property. There are al... http://t.co/ppYvQst8 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
"Most public schools in the United States depend for their initial funding on a tax on local property. There are also state and federal funding sources, and we will discuss them later, but the property tax is the decisive force in shaping inequality." Kozol
And in Minnesota the property tax is the source for two pools of school funding: Foundation aid and local levies. Local levies stay in the district and foundation aid is meant to ensure all public schools in the state are adequately funded, even those in property poor areas. Problem is this year the state decided to balance the budget, getting us out of the state's longest government shutdown in history, on the backs of schools. But they didn't balance the budget on the backs of all schools equally. No, they only borrowed that money from foundation aid at a sum of 40%. So, schools in poor areas like St. Paul North of Maryland, Frogtown, and rural areas on the Iron Range took a much greater cut than those in property wealthy areas that relied less on foundation aid to fund their schools. Whats more, charter schools under Minnesota law cannot levy local tax dollars and the money from local levies that should follow those students to their schools don't follow them if they go to a charter, they stay with the home district. So, as Ronald Wolk points out charter schools attract and enroll higher numbers of poor and minority students than Caucasian suburban kids meaning that the students in my great state whose heads our Republican legislature balanced the budget on were disproportionately minority students from inner city charter schools. Charter schools, that is, that aren't funded primarily through private sources like the KIPP Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, or Broad. This is why I have classes of 30-35 students with a 95% ELL population and 90% free and reduced lunch. At least they can still come to school and get a good meal.
@anderscj
anderscj"Because the property tax is counted as a tax deduction by the federal government, home-owners in a wealthy suburb ... http://t.co/izEVChoh 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
This quote should make your blood boil:
"Because the property tax is counted as a tax deduction by the federal government, home-owners in a wealthy suburb get back a substantial portion of the money that they spend to fund their children's schools—effectively, a federal subsidy for an unequal education. Home-owners in poor districts get this subsidy as well, but, because their total tax is less, the subsidy is less. The mortgage interest that home-owners pay is also treated as a tax deduction—in effect, a second federal subsidy. These subsidies, as I have termed them, are considerably larger than most people understand." KozolAnd, this tax deduction is the largest deduction for most mid- to low-income homeowners so there is little chance it will ever go away. Its just like the problem we have with high fructose corn syrup and farm corn subsidies. "This is going to make me fat, it is going to reduce my quality of life and my life expectancy but I am hungry and it is what I can afford to eat."
@anderscj
anderscj"the districts that face the toughest challenges are also likely to be those that have the fewest funds to meet the... http://t.co/xKnLVw0u 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj"Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school—and to the ... http://t.co/MqELV95t 26 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
Lets repeat that one:
"Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school—and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequity. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives." KozolThis is exactly what John Taylor Gatto talks about in Weapons of Mass Instruction.
It also reminds me of this bit from George Carlin:
@anderscj
anderscj"giving people lavish praise for spending what they have strikes one as disingenuous." Kozol 23 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj"Urban schools, they argue, should dispense with 'frills' and focus on 'the basics' needed for employment. Emphasis... http://t.co/mku2xQ9Z 23 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
@michellek107
Michelle Baldwin@anderscj that's sickening. 23 days ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj@michellek107 I think that observation is more true today than when Kozol wrote it in 1991. 23 days ago via Twitterrific · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj"If children are seen primarily as raw material for industry, a greater investment in the better raw material makes... http://t.co/Zmcb9BNQ 23 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
@anderscj
anderscj"Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go nit to the child in... http://t.co/abSmHzF5 23 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
"Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go nit to the child in the greatest need but to the child of the highest bidder—the child of parents who, more frequently than not, have also enjoyed the same abundance when they were schoolchildren." KozolWhich in turn breeds feelings of entitlement. The crazy thing is this kind of condition is not good for either the poor or the rich as Richard Wilkinson so thoroughly and convincingly points out here:
@anderscj
anderscj"hope cannot be marketed as easily as blue jeans. Human liberation doesn't often come this way—from mass hypnosis. ... http://t.co/kp1uSzvE 23 days ago via Twittelator · powered by @socialditto
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