2020 Medley #20 | Live Long and Prosper
WHAT’S ‘BROKEN’? THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OR AMERICA ITSELF?
Margaret Fortune of the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools calls out the President for lying about former Vice President Biden’s plan for charter schools. The comment by the current occupant of the White House that Biden wants to close all charter schools has been debunked over and over again, though this will hardly stop him lying about it…nor will it stop his base from believing him.
In any case, Fortune continues by making a misstatement of her own when she talks about public schools in Black neighborhoods being “broken.”
It’s true that public schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods filled with Black and Brown children, are generally not as successful as schools in higher-income areas, but the problem is the larger society’s inability (or unwillingness) to overcome poverty. The problem is the racism and classism inherent in the social structure of the US. Why is it that test scores in low-income schools are lower than in wealthy schools? Are all the schools in low-income neighborhoods bad and all the schools in high-income neighborhoods good?
No. It’s because…
- the US is one of the very few countries in the wealthy, industrialized, capitalist world that spends more money on the education of wealthy children than poor children (see here, here, here, and here).
- standardized testing which we use to “grade” our schools are culturally and racially biased (see here, here, here, and here).
Children of color in the US have been denied equal opportunities compared to CONTINUE READING: 2020 Medley #20 | Live Long and Prosper