Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Vagabonds Aside for a Minute

A friend of my sister's and his family are moving to our town, and they contacted me to ask about schools. I wrestled with what to say to them before I passed their inquiry on to my sister-in-law, who is both a teacher and a parent. I have some very definite ideas about the schools in our district, but I am not a parent, and I find that what I say is not always what people want to hear.

When I say "people" I really mean white people. Most of them look at the test scores and conclude that the schools which are less ethnically, racially, and economically diverse are somehow better because they have higher aggregate scores. What they don't consider is that all of our schools are equally funded and staffed and have the same programs for exceptional students. In addition, white kids across the county score equally well on the tests, so if that's the yardstick, it doesn't matter where their child goes.

In the meantime, they may be depriving their children of living and working in a diverse environment, an experience that, in my opinion, will be more valuable to them than any of the lessons they may receive in our classrooms, which, by the way, are pretty much the same quality in any school in the system.

1 comment:

  1. I agree completely! The are no bad high schools in the county, anyone who thinks otherwise is misinformed. It does kind of bug me when everyone wants to go to Washington Lee, because they think it's a better school, which is not true, it just has the IB program. It reminds me of before middle school, when almost half of my grade transferred to Kenmore becasue of windows. I personally am going to Washington Lee because it is my home school, and the fact that a lot of my friends go there helps.

    That said, I also agree that going to Yorktown would be really weird. With a majority of white students, many of whom are upper class irritating people, that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me...

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