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I can't bite my tongue any longer.
When your kids get to school age, you don't move. Stop blaming lack of
affordable housing for poor school performance. Six years ago the vacancy
rate was over 7% in Mpls. The drop out rate was still
astronomical.
Here are some rules for educating your kids.
1. Don't move when your kids hit school age.
2. Be settled when the time comes.
3. Don't get fired, if you do, get another job, eat
crushed glass if you have to, sacrifice everything for the stability of
your child's
environment. I refuse to believe that 50% of the kids in MPS are victim to
events beyond their parents control. The parents put
these kids into that
spot. We as society have to quit enabling these irresponsible
parents.
4. Own a home when it comes
time to start schooling your kids.
5. BTW In my old and new neighborhoods, the single
parents are busting their A**ses to keep their kids in one
spot.
Craig Miller
Former Fultonite
Camden's 3rd largest landlord
I
promise the list members (and Mr. Atherton) that I won't bait him any more
by saying that he relishes attention. And I'll leave the heroism of his
posts
to the judgment of others.
I have done more than wonder why
the graduation rate of the MPS is no more
than 50 percent: I have
identified what I believe to be a few root causes,
including lack of
affordable housing causing transiency, the cultural
adjustment of
immigration, the stresses and deficiencies associated with
poverty. Mr.
Atherton seems to believe these are not as germane to public
school
failure as is a self-perpetuating and inefficient bureaucracy staffed
by
incredibly cynical people out to save their own jobs at the cost of young
peoples' education. I'll leave it to list members to determine whose
viewpoint is more credible.
Mr. Atherton does get somewhat specific
in his explanation of continuation
schools, but blithely states that
because the kids fall under what would be
classified as special
education, then extra federal dollars would be
forthcoming to pay for
it. Right now, under the federal IDEA legislation for
special education,
the feds are supposed to be picking up 40 percent of the
costs for their
mandates. The actual federal dollars for these mandates
amounts to only
15 percent of the cost. (I got my info from Nancy Reder at
the National
Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] And I won't even charge Mr. Atherton for the link!)
Any of
the self-serving education professionals Mr. Atherton decries
will tell him
that lack of federal monies for federal mandates is
creating huge funding
problems for the MPS and other schools. In other
words, his solution isn't
that simple.
As for the war zone weblinks,
Mr. Atherton introduced this area of discussion
when he said something
along the lines of "if children can learn in war
zones, why can't
they learn in the inner city?" I was merely trying to point
out
that they probably don't learn in war zones as well as Mr. Atherton would
find acceptable, but since he included it in the discussion, he might
feel
otherwise. After all, the issue isn't whether there is "some
learning" in war
zones, the inner city, or the MPS, but whether the
conditions involved make
learning more difficult, and prohibitive for
some children.
Mr. Atherton's statement that "I'm not sure why it's
relevant that I might
redesign the schools in the image I would want for
my child," is curious,
since he lives in the MPS district and has
obviously profound disagreements
with the way the schools operate.
Unless Mr. Atherton considers MPS reform a
theoretical exercise, I would
argue that it is highly relevant. For some of
us, this is about more
than other people's kids.
List members are probably growing weary of
this back and forth between Mr.
Atherton and me--I think our areas of
disagreement are pretty well stated.
Any specific responses he wants to
make to this post are welcome by me, and
for my part will represent the
last word on this particular thread.
Britt Robson
Lyndale
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