This Michael Brown?
Posted on 08/25/2014 9:44:44 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
The specter of Michael Brown is inescapable inside his high school.
Hundreds of students, most of them African American, walk the same halls and sit in the same lunchroom as Brown did — before his hard-won graduation and, days later, his death in the middle of Canfield Drive not far away.
The American flag at the entrance of Normandy High School flies at half-staff. Students write and draw in their journals and read essays about police brutality, Brown’s fatal shooting by a white police officer on Aug. 9 considered the most vivid case study at hand.
Teachers rush from class to weep, behind closed doors, in faculty restrooms. They say they are crying not only for Brown, but also for Normandy and the students who remain in their classrooms.
If education is the gateway to a better future, the door here was shut long ago, fueling a mix of resignation and rage.
The school system’s entrenched dysfunction helps explain the street anger that has unfolded in neighboring Ferguson since Brown was killed by officer Darren Wilson in what Wilson’s supporters have called an act of self-defense.
Brown’s death came amid one of the most chaotic chapters in this failing school district’s history.
The Normandy district is on the front lines of the national school-choice debate, which at its core asks whether public policy should enable families in poor, low-performing schools to attend higher-performing public and private schools in other communities. Normandy is a test of the public system’s defenders, who say such districts must be fixed, not abandoned.
For years, Normandy High was considered the most dangerous school in the city, with abysmal test scores, underperforming teachers, a student body in which nine in 10 students qualify for subsidized or free lunches, and graduation rate that’s less than 50 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This year, they were told they had to stay at Normandy High. The school didn’t have the same advanced classes they had been taking. And on Day 5 of the academic year, they told their mother they had been “jumped,” or beaten up.
Can't have any of them "acting white" or there will be severe consequences. Only hoodlums are allowed in the hood.
“...before his hard-won graduation ...”
This is a public school.
Hard won, my as...er...my Obamaregion.
Hurl alert.
The Post is drilling for a new low point.
If this is true, then this "school" isn't really a "school," and needs to be closed down immediately. What's the point of funding a failed endeavor?
Washington Post = Pravda.
Hard won graduation? They all graduate if they finish out their time.
“Teachers rush from class to weep, behind closed doors, in faculty restrooms.”
I’d weep too if I had to teach there.
.
When was the last time the left and the black community mourned and protested about some injustice to someone who was NOT a budding thug, ‘aspiring rapper’, or stripper/prostitute?
Where is their best and brightest?
The fact that 80% of the “graduates” are functional illiterates says it’s time to abandon the government school paradigm.
Meanwhile the people in this community continue to elect and re-elect the same far left liberal extremists who created the situation and keep these people impoverished. Go figure.
Voucher programs are tailor-made for Ms. Clemons’s sons. Instead, they are sentenced to failing schools and all the pathologies that come with it.
I taught in a school system similar to Normandy for three years after retiring from the military. I still remember the students who tried to get an education against all odds.
I wonder what Michael Brown’s academic school disciplinary records looked like? I’m sure the “gentle giant” and aspiring strong-arm robber was a model student and a role model for the other “yuts.”
The only way to “fix” schools like the ones in Ferguson is with rigid discipline and liberal expulsions of the young thugs—most of them on a permanent basis. Get rid of the hoodlums and schools will improve overnight. Roughly 6% of the students are responsible for almost 70% of the serious disciplinary problems at school. Most federal judges would disagree, but those thugs do not have a right to a “free” education on the taxpayer’s dime.
Can we throw up a little now, all together.
Cry me a river. The WaPo doesn’t know that it’s them and their pals on the Left who rule “public education”, and have always used race baiting of especially blacks in poverty as their A-team in their race to the bottom, to advance communism?
Maybe the WP should take their case to the
source— the Leftists in charge— from top to bottom. The rent a riot mentality is alive and well at the Post, soaked in sentimentality.
How else can rent a riot enjoy such cover?
Isn’t the proper rearing of children the parents job. Guess where these kids are learning to be abusive.
I believe the thugs that are kept in the schools are, in effect, working for the Left, to prevent as many of the decent black kids in those schools from getting a good education and bettering themselves.
Why do schools have zero tolerance policies for 6 year olds with “pop tart guns” and honor students with butter knives or Midol, but when it comes to teenaged, violent thugs their “hands are tied”?
Public schools are a 19th century paradigm that outlived its usefulness at the end of the 20th century.
Khanacademy and MIT are just a couple of free internet sources for outstanding curriculum. You can bloody well teach your own kids sans any government involvement.
And if you can’t, it’s ALL on you.
Schools nowadays are mostly just babysitting service and free food. Some more than others.
Average Normandy spending per student per year (in 2009): $13,609.00 http://visionforchildren.org/infocenter/explore/zipdetail
Average Catholic School Spending per student per year: $6,890
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html
So go find something else to cry about!
We already knew all of this from watching “The Wire” which ended six years ago.
These problems have yet to be fixed in a SINGLE big city, cities invariably controlled
for Democrats for decades. How come?
Oh, yeah. “No Tracking” and “social promotion” for starters. “No Tracking” assures that a few actual criminals in each class prevent everyone from leaning anything, and “social promotion” shoves everyone down the ladder of ignorance one step at a time each year until they finally hit bottom and are carted away.
And that’s just for starters.
LAST WEEK HIS TEACHER SAID HE WAS A YEAR AND A HALF BEHIND!!!!!
Stupid reporters (I won't call them Journalists) just cherry pick what ever information that floats by on the net
Normally I rant on about FReepers who post too little of an excerpt. They post too little info forcing one to click the link to form even a vague idea of what the author wants to say.
In your case.. You posted TOO MUCH! And you didn’t post a Barf Alert.
“The American flag at the entrance of Normandy High School flies at half-staff. “
Who ordered that? Obama? The governor doesn’t have the authority to do it as far as I know. Or did the school decide to do this on their own.
I realize that with all the rioting & looting going on that this may seem like a small thing. But symbolism is important.
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