Oregon: White flight from schools should be stopped, says group.

Reuters ^ | 11/11/2014

[Altura Ct.]

A citizen's group in Portland, Oregon, said on Monday the city should drop policies allowing students to transfer public schools, saying it is making the schools less racially diverse and poorer.

"It's mostly white, mostly middle-class families, transferring out of schools that have students of color," said Kali Thorne Ladd, a member of the group which had been asked by educators to evaluate Portland Public Schools transfer policies.

These allow students to switch to schools in different neighborhoods, but they must enter a lottery if spots are limited. There is also a separate lottery system for students hoping to transfer to selective "magnet" schools which offer advanced curriculums.

[bert]

Your premise seems to depend on a new definition of family. What you describe as a family are in reality just people living together.

It must always be stressed that there are black sub cultures that are prevalent and actually are families. There is not homogeneity within the black community.

[DaveA37]

Assuming you are white and YOU had a choice, would you send your white child to a school where kids of “color” are NOT disciplined but the white kids are?

[G Larry]

The government bribes school districts based upon attendance, which is the primary reason disruptive students are not removed from the classroom.

It is impossible to teach in an undisciplined environment.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Post 60—great post, very informative. Thanx.

[Shimmer1]

ok. I see that point. But does that mean when I separated from my husband, then he died, that my sons and I were no longer a family?????

[FreedomStar3028]

Okay. Marginally successful. But the quality of living?

Blacks enslave blacks. Whites have done more for blacks in general, then blacks themselves. So why the hatred toward white people?

[arthurus]

It always wonders me that the Left insists that Blacks cannot learn anything unless they are in the presence of white students. Who are the racists?

[wintertime]

There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between Hispanic school enrollment and free lunches. Hm?....What do you think is going on with that. Are some Hispanics more prosperous and more Americanized than others?

[arthurus]

Forcing middle class kids to share classrooms with feral children should drive the students to homeschooling (the ferals are not students, a term which implies some desire to learn something).

[A_perfect_lady]

It’s not because they’re black. It’s because they act like predatory animals. A high school teacher told me he complimented a black boy for his good work. The next day the boy was absent. When he showed up again he’d been severely beaten by the other blacks. He never turned in another assignment or completed another test. (That’s the reason.)

That is one of the most tragic things I have ever heard.

[FreedomStar3028]

Yep. Don’t impeach. Just remove the job, and all its authority. The right of the people is infallible, deafening, and when one man or woman has more power then millions of voters, that person has become a citizen of one. They should no longer retain citizenship, an outcast. With no constitutional rights. Just as they have given us.

They take our rights and liberties. We should take 10 fold from any who deny us our constitutional rights. You’re right. We are not a free nation. We can be. Because we have the second amendment. No force on Earth could stop a tenth of Americans armed. But we are supposed to be civilized, a nation of laws. Which is just an illusion.

[arthurus]

Rich Leftists consider everyone else to be lesser species suitable only for experimentation and indulging Leftist fantasies, black, white, or anything else.

[TontoKowalski]

Many posters here seem to assume the issue is discipline. It may be. But my hunch is that a gradual growing unease with the lack of academic rigor is likely the driver. Note that the story emphasizes that selective magnet schools are also a target.

As the percentage of students from poor backgrounds increases, academic rigor tends to give way to remediation.

Stealing a few snippets from your excellent, spot-on, post.

I'm an educator. The most important metric in evaluating public school effectiveness is graduation rate.

All other considerations are secondary. Resources are focused on students who are not success-oriented, in attempts to "drag them over the line." This means fewer, sometimes a total lack, of time, energy, and money directed towards the top and middle tier students. The greater trouble a student a gets into, the more resources diverted to "save" that student.

The students who are most likely to be our future leaders, thinkers, producers... get almost no attention at all. It is a major failing of public education.

Academic expectations are dropped so low that other students now longer view a high school diploma as anything to be proud of.

[wintertime]

You cannot force me to go to school where you want just so you will have one good person who is not a criminal in your school.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Unless you can ransom your child ( by way of home or private schooling), yes, the government does have the police and court power to **force** you to send a child to a school of the government’s choosing.

( Real bullets in those guns on the hip.)

[wintertime]

Please remember that behind every government teacher stands an armed policeman to force the will of the government.

[bert]

It is complex issue , but the separation sundered the family

[Eva]

Of course it is, when you take all the top performing students out of the classroom, remove all sense of academic competition, what is left behind are unmotivated, disinterested and bored.

T is the top students who make the classrooms interesting by opening up discussions and interacting with the teacher. It is a sense of competition that makes the top students role models.

[Shimmer1]

Noooo. I disagree. Oh it sundered our family alright, but not like you mean. We were still a family. He’d never been “there” for us anyway.

[Shimmer1]

I’m not her, but I’ll say right out that I would never consider sending my kids to a government kiddie prison anywhere!

[A_perfect_lady]

What's really interesting to me, on a personal level, is this: I teach English in an inner-city middle school in Los Angeles. My classrooms tend to have one black kid, two Asians, and the rest are Latino. About once every other year we get a white kid who transfers 2 months later.

Anyway, I do have an Honors class, although our definition of Honors is "Reads at or near grade level, does homework, and doesn't act out." In other words, normal kids in other parts of the country (or other points in time.)

So anyway, I commented about my Honors class to one of my lower-level classes... I just said something about what book they are reading now... and one of the kids said, "That's where all the white kids are."

My first thought was "we don't have any white kids." But my second thought was... Wait... he means how they act, not how they look. To be white is to do well in school, to like rock music and watch mainstream tv instead of Telemundo, maybe even a little BBC (one of my brightest kids is an avid Dr. Who fan). It was just weird to see how academic success seemed to correlate with an appreciation for white culture. Or at least a lack of hostility toward it. But in terms of skin tone, if you looked at each of my classes, you'd see the same range of color, from quite dark to nearly white. But the behavior is radically different.

They are now serving breakfast in the classroom (whole new nightmare) and my lower-level kids bolt straight for the most sugary, carb-laden options possible. They want juice, not milk. They want cereal, not eggs. They want cookies, not fruit.

Then the very next period is my Honors class, and I keep the leftovers for them (I'm not supposed to, apparently we are supposed to throw it away so that ... that ... I don't even know why.) And my Honors kids head right for the milk and fruit. I mean, they pounce on it as if it were Koolaid and cookies. We read our book and I can hear the quiet crunching of my little "white" kids eating apples and reading a book.

The whole thing is just really weird.