Originally Posted by OccultHawk

Good post

Also concerning lip service to the dire importance of schools from Bill Gates to the CDC - since it’s suddenly so ****ing important- is there going to ever be any effort to tackle how goddamn dysfunctional so many schools are and very frankly schools populated with black students?

Classrooms that are constantly noisy, chaotic, mean-spirited, rife with bullying (oh but you gotta look at both sides), and even real fists on faces violent - are NOT promoting healthy child development.

There may be exceptions but in general schools in poor black communities haven’t been properly educating students probably since integration. They’ve never allowed for there to be anything but a white suburban education model forced on urban black youth who respond by decimating it.

If black people were allowed to govern their own schools grandmothers would patrolling the halls and classes and the students would be shutting the **** up and learning to read and do math.

Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton are classic examples of people with big opinions who don’t have a ****ing clue what’s going on in the trenches.

Suddenly school is so important. Then why wasn’t it important to correct the problem that about half the kids never learned ****?

Originally Posted by TheBig3

You're touching on a topic I read up on frequently, so I'll try to answer the question without ranting.

The Federal Government is least poised to resolve this very real problem. And since the Federal Government increasingly gets more attention from Americans and less attention is devoted to local issues, it's unlikely to change.

You need to change zoning laws and education laws in a given state and the corresponding municipalities in order to effect change. In smaller, less powerful towns and cities, this might be easier, but it's also less of a demand. The lower the population, the more likely it is to have a regional school system, which is (imo) the fairest option, and it's what high pop. towns should be made to adopt by the State.

High population cities with good schools punish poor children like this:
1. Low housing production due to zoning laws spikes home prices
2. Education, which is strongly budgeted by the State, overemphasizes budget allocation to rich towns through "fairness" arguments. Since the state budget goes first (before #3) all municipalities get in the same ballpark. Budgets for kids are generally measured on a per-head dollar amount, so lets say Town A is known to be rich, so OK we'll only give $40 per head to that town from the State. Town B isn't rich and the State wants to do the right thing so it allocated $60 per-head in Town B.
3. This is where the bait-and-switch happens. After the State has allocated funding, then the locals get to pitch in. The rich town dumps tons of cash in the form of municipal taxes into their schools - something Town B can't afford to do - and this local contribution comes after the State funding so it's not accounted for in the state budget (which I consider theft).

#3 is doubly nefarious because those local taxes do a lot to keep people out. Can't afford the city bills then you don't live in the city.

Here in Massachusetts, we've attempted to resolve the issue through Busing (one of the major reasons Boston is considered a racist city). And while the goal was noble, the execution was miserable, and all these years later, the consensus is that busing students from neighborhoods to poor schools might give those individual children a better education, but it's deprived inner-city schools from adequate funding, and is a bandaid on bad schools in major metros.

Originally Posted by TheBig3

#3 is doubly nefarious because those local taxes do a lot to keep people out. Can't afford the city bills then you don't Here in Massachusetts, we've attempted to resolve the issue through Busing (one of the major reasons Boston is considered a racist city). And while the goal was noble, the execution was miserable, and all these years later, the consensus is that busing students from neighborhoods to poor schools might give those individual children a better education, but it's deprived inner-city schools from adequate funding, and is a bandaid on bad schools in major metros.

Originally Posted by OccultHawk

That’s hilarious. Exactly what I was saying about the suburban model.

Originally Posted by OccultHawk

You may or may not know but I taught in Japan for years.

They way I understood it the schools were funded “federally” (quotes used because federal is a loaded American term) and very equitably. But unlike America the schools are given a great deal or almost total autonomy locally. Teachers are highly respected and given lifetime tenure from day one. With that respect they’re allowed to govern their schools as they see fit. A cultural uniformity also serves to create a continuity across the country.

Massachusetts and Florida are probably really different animals. What I’ve seen in Florida isn’t underfunding. It’s corruption and usually racist misallocation funds that cause the most harm and leave the most disenfranchised in the lurch.

No matter how much money you throw at the schools around here it’s not going to help the bottom quartile. Money is mostly spent in ways that make sure it’s siphoned back into the hands of super rich people like the top brass at Pearson Education.

Originally Posted by jwb

Patrice O'Neal is from Boston and he said it's a very racist city. I trust his judgement.

Originally Posted by jwb

Nah I don't think that's the only reason why. It has the vibes of a highly segregated city with a ****load of pissed off blue collar Irish guys. It's like how the Celtics are the quintessential white boy NBA team or how the Red Sox were the last ones to integrate by far iirc.

It's not to say there are cities that don't have racism but some cities are more racist than others.

I've lived outside Boston and I've lived in south Florida outside Miami and I've lived in the actual deep south in NC. They all have racism in different ways and to different degrees.