Suggested Discussion Outline - Leaving Children Behind

Post Reply
johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Discussion Outline - Leaving Children Behind

Post by johnkarls »

.

A. Brief Review of Inner-City Conditions

A-1. 99% of total households headed by a single adult!!!

A-2. 90% of total households headed by a single adult who is a drug addict!!!

A-3. 75% - 80% of total households headed by a single-adult addict who hands over any receipts (welfare, etc.) to the pusher, so the kids have to steal just in order to eat!!!

A-4. No. 1 career objective of young inner-city males is to become a runner by third grade (pushers don’t like to get arrested themselves so they recruit third-graders as runners) – a runner will make more than a Wall Street attorney until he (the runner) is busted.

A-5. No. 1 career objective of young inner-city females is to become the girl friend of a runner.

A-6. The greatest source of intellectual stimulation for inner-city kids is a TV set, if the kids have been able to steal one.


B. How “Apartheid” Education in America (as Jonathan Kozol terms it) results from Apartheid housing patterns.

B-1. Parents shop for homes in “good” suburbs with “good” school systems.

B-2. K-12 public schools financed by local property taxes.

B-3. Our inner-city ghettoes have NO property-tax base, so our inner-city kids are condemned to attending what only a gross perversion of the English language would term “schools” – producing a permanent “under class”

B-4. Identical-twin studies (studying the measured IQ of inner-city identical twins orphaned before their first birthday where one twin is adopted by another inner-city family and the other, by a suburban family) consistently show that inner-city kids have the same intelligence as suburban kids!!!

B-5. Virtually all of the sponsors of our 180 “I Have A Dream” projects in 50 American cities (providing tutoring and mentoring from third grade through high school with a guarantee of college tuition for 100% of the members of an inner-city third-grade class or all of the third-grade residents of a housing project) LOATHED THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS that were inflicted on their Dreamers, and approximately half of the sponsors founded and financed charter schools for their Dreamers to attend.

B-6. Limousine-liberal politicians constantly encounter firestorms of protest from their inner-city constituents for “carrying water” for the teachers’ unions by opposing vouchers/school choice/etc., while sending their own kids to private schools.


C. “No Child Left Behind”

C-1. Enacted in 2001 as an amendment to the Federal “Elementary and Secondary (schools, that is – “secondary” refers to junior/senior high school) Education Act” of 1965).

C-2. Per the National Education Association (teachers’ union), it is likely to be re-vamped in early 2008.

C-3. The heart of “No Child Left Behind” is nearly-constant testing of all students on solely verbal and mathematical ability, with draconian consequences for schools, teachers, principals, etc., whose students don’t “measure up”!!! In theory, a “failing” school is supposed to be closed, with its students dispersed to surrounding schools that are not “failing”!!!

C-4. Teachers’ organizations have traditionally criticized “No Child Left Behind” for over-emphasizing testing, gearing virtually all class-room time in inner-city schools to math and verbal skills that will be tested to the exclusion of everything else, and for the failure of the federal government to provide the funding necessary to make the program successful.

C-5. Jonathan Kozol’s “The Shame of the Nation – The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” – instead of providing his traditional stomach-wrenching detailed descriptions of typical inner-city schools – spends most of its time criticizing “No Child Left Behind”!!! (Though Kozol also spends a fair amount of effort in criticizing the collaboration of many inner-city schools with local corporations to provide as part of the curriculum vocational training for specific jobs categories that the corporations have in abundance in that locality.) HOWEVER, KOZOL’S “MAGIC WAND” SOLUTION IS ALWAYS TO SHOCK THE CONSCIENCE OF THE NATION SO THAT IT SUDDENLY LAVISHES RESOURCES ON THE INNER-CITY KIDS AND WELCOMES THEM INTO SUBURBAN SCHOOLS!!!


D. The Magic Wand

D-1. Most of the ideas that have been generated (e.g., incentive teacher pay) produce only marginal results.

D-2. For dramatic results (the typical “I Have A Dream” Program produces 60% - 65% rates of high school graduation and college matriculation in inner-city schools or housing projects where the preceding and succeeding classes had single-digit HS graduation rates), THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IS SURROGATE PARENTS (which is what tutors, mentors and other volunteers are, in effect).

D-3. Our “think piece” candidate for “magic wand” status = Replacing schools that are judged “failing” under “No Child Left Behind” with brand new schools with at least 200% of the capacity of the “failed” school – with federal financing (and perhaps federal administration as well) for a first-class physical plant and a per-student operating budget equal to a sufficient multiple of the per-student operating budget in the neighboring suburbs so that the new federal school is a successful “magnet” school.

D-3-a. Mentoring of the inner-city kids, one-on-one, by the suburban kids (and their families) who attend the “magnet” school.

D-3-b. Soliciting support from the nation’s top colleges and universities in the form of announcing that their traditional preferences for applicants with unusual experiences will now be skewed toward successful mentoring experiences in such magnet schools.

D-3-c. Abolishing “tracking” (not just “special ed”) in order to prevent segregated classrooms under an integrated roof.

D-3-d. Other improvements on the “think piece” model.

D-4. Other “magic wands”

Post Reply

Return to “Suggested Discussion Outline - Leaving Children Behind - Jan. 14”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest