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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Why are Charters Good for Some People's Children but not Others?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Why are Charters Good for Some People's Children but not Others?:

Why are Charters Good for Some People's Children but not Others?


Why?


A telling and thought-provoking thread from the education blog, Edushytser.

Which brings us to today’s fiercely urgent question: why are white people so eager to advocate for the sort of schools to which they would never send their own children?

But more than three quarters of Democracy Prep’s students—23% each year—never made it onto the stageIf Frazier is aware of the school’s attrition rate, among the highest in New York City, he doesn’t mention it.

Instead, the writer is merely reflecting a growing consensus among elites that a certain kind of schooling is necessary to propel poor minority students along the steep uphill climb to college. This formula for success, the “special sauce,” is long and hard and requires the sort of militaristic discipline that I doubt any writer for the New Yorker would tolerate for his or her children for a day, let alone the four years, eight years, even 12-year-long slog that is supposed to end in a mythical place called “college.”

A nine, ten or 11 hour school day would no doubt strike middle class parents as excessive (what about Skyler’s soccer practice, or Emma’s beekeeping camp?) 


Seattle Libraries Seeking Volunteer Tutors
Seattle Public Library is seeking volunteers to tutor students at after-school drop-in sessions in several libraries starting this fall.  Info here.