Tuesday, April 20: If you like/hate this post, you might like/hate a recent post on minority students’ test scores even more.
Monday, April 17: For someone who says she’s tired of ranting, I still do a lot of it, don’t I?
I, of all people, know better than to rely on a single news story, but that headline fired me up. I fell hook, line, and sinker for the Associated Press’s slanted coverage. Look at the headline. How could I resist? As the day progressed, however, I started to second-guess myself. After further research, I figured out what’s really going on.
Although I still believe the achievement gap between blacks and whites is at the center of this issue (whether people admit it in public or not), I completely missed the point. The “resegregation” angle may be worth exploring, but the larger issues are the takeover of 25 suburban schools (based in part on a misinterpreted, century-old statute), coveting thy neighbor’s tax base, and “diversity” bean-counting.
I was right, but the conclusion was based on very limited information. More later.
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Update (11:03 a.m.): I’d forgotten about this post. Last year Nebraska wanted to force whites to return to bad government schools. Now the state wants to separate students based on skin color. (Access the old story here)
Coerced segregation or integration? Make up your mind!
Later…I’m hearing two different views on this Nebraska thing. Some say it’s what blacks want; other say it’s what whites want. Could it be a little of both? I’d love to hear from someone in Nebraska who knows exactly what the deal is.
Even later…A couple of dissenters tell me (though they can’t resist the ad hominem) that I know nothing about the legislation and my assessment is all wet (paraphrasing, of course!).
Let me say this. I haven’t read the bill, although I’ll probably track it down and link. It’s not rocket surgery, for Pete’s sake. The point is that these things all have a common thread: the achievement gap among black and white students. While each bill or concept may be slightly different than the others, they all amount to the same thing. Government schools are hamstrung. If parents don’t get involved and push their children to excel, there’s not much civil servants in the system can do. In desperation, politicians come up with bills like the one in Nebraska. What is so complicated or unique or esoteric about this bill?
If you don’t like this post, guess what? It’s a personal problem. This blog seems to cause some people a whole lot of stress. Life is too short. Just surf somewhere else. You’ll live longer.
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Oh. My.Word.
I thought I was sleepwalking this morning when I read this: lawmakers in Nebraska have written a law mandating the racial segregation of government schools.
Wait a second, didn’t the Supreme Court end government-mandated race segregation, even though the decision was based not on legal reasoning, but on a flawed sociological study and social engineering motives of the justices?
And a Republican governor signed the bill into law! I know why. The people in Omaha are fed up with black parents complaining about the achievement gap between students, so they’re giving blacks their own schools. Does this mean the faculty will be predominantly black, too? Hmmm…
Let me make a distinction. If a school is mostly black because whites have left the district, that’s not illegal. Americans are free to move wherever they want. And take their kids with them. If people want to start a private, race-based school, they can, as long as they don’t accept government funds. If the government separates people on the basis of race, it’s illegal. Just thought I’d clear that up.
Whatever the legislature’s reason for doing this, they will never get away with it. The academic achievement gap is a no-win situation in America. Differences between blacks and whites mean there will always be racial disparities. While skin color preferences are designed to artificially minimize disparities, they don’t change the fact that for whatever reason, blacks generally perform worse on standardized tests than whites. Black children lag behind their white peers academically. Facts are stubborn things. They don’t change with the times or mold themselves to fit hare-brained, politically correct theories.
Well, I’m not mad at the politicians for writing and passing an unconstitutional law. They’re trying to placate black parents who keep calling them racists, but it won’t work. You can separate students based on skin color, dumb down school for everyone else, teach “afrocentrism”…whatever. There’s no miracle achievement-gap closer.
They’ll just have to void the law and suck it up. For parents who’re tired of all the complaining, black or white, there’s always HOMESCHOOLING.
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La Shawn:
Much has been written about the reasons behind the underachievement of Black children (family, IQ, racism, etc..). But just look at New Orleans and it all becomes clear as day. And just talk to anyone who has attended such schools. As always, the “grapevine” always is more educational than all the studies and MSM and Internet info.
Some friends say that their siblings have been physically assaulted for overachievement (ACTING WHITE).
This is not rocket science. The underachievement goes far beyond IQ; it doesn’t take a genius to pass basic tests, yet Blacks almost take pride in this underachievement.
And just look at the products of the New Orleans Public Schools – “evacuees” still living in hotels when Burger King hamgurger flippers in New Orleans are earning over $ 10/hour.
Do I need to say more?
La Shawn,
The Washington Post has a story on today’s front page about the lag behind of Black students in reading and math in one of the richests counties in the country (Fairfax VA), compared to the poorer counties of the state.
Odd. In the 19th century there were black graduates from Harvard and other northern universities who served in the Union Army.
They were (as required) fluent in five languages (Latin, Greek, English, and two “modern” European languages), and the equal of any of their white university peers.
Unless something has happened to black brains in the last 150 years, black children ought to be capable of similar accomplishments today.
But even black teachers probably do not believe that black children could learn five languages.
They will not even try, but are content with ebonics.
The future they are throwing away is not their own, but that of their kids.
The achievement gap in public schools is also frequently “dealt with” by having “pow-wows” about racial discrimination — mainly, the perils of “white privilege” and how that affects students. IOW, little or no discussion of what black parents and students can do to improve the situation. White educators and administrators must reach “deep down” and recognize their “privilege.”
Of course, even if this is done, the answer to closing the achievement gap remains as elusive as ever!
Seahawk,
You nailed a major part of the problem:
“They will not even try”
So what happens if you don’t want your child to go to the school that they are ‘ethnically-zoned’ to?
I totally agree that there are MANY problems with the educational system but I don’t think this is the answer at ALL.
LaShawn,
Wanted to fill in a gap. You said, “If people want to start a private, race-based school, they can, as long as they don’t accept government funds.” This is true, BUT if the school is tax-exempt under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, they CANNOT have a race-based school, or they will lose that status.
Right. I was thinking of for-profit schools competing on the open market. That’s the influence by my libertarian alter-ego.
But, but, but….. “students of color” can’t do well on the standardized tests because the test itself is biased! Or so they try to tell me in my “Multicultural Teaching & Learning” class that is required for my Masters in Elementary Education….
Oh, and what about students in the Omaha district that aren’t white, black or Hispanic? What schools do they go to?
My revolutionary solution is this: Create a nationwide benchmark for what is an “adequate” reading, computation, communication skill on each grade level. Test it regularly and send each parent a bumper sticker that says “My child is two levels below adequate” or “My child is just adequate” or “My child is better than adequate.”
If a child is not three levels above adequate, make him eat a balanced diet school lunch, bar him from sex education, keep him out of extra curricular activities, send him to remedial exercise classes and pound the three R’s into him relentlessly.
LaShawn, Southern Highschool of Maryland (in the Eastern Shore near Edgewater) has bad race relations. The black folks actually wanted their own black high school. I’m not sure if they got it yet, but nowhere was the topic of seperate but equal even thought of as a bad idea.
In Shady Side, Maryland (also in Eastern Shore.) the black folks protested and got a fully funded, newly renovated elementary school.
It is what it is, and that’s how it is on the Eastern Shore.
This is what happens when people post my links on message boards. It attracts a “diverse” range of readers.
You know, Paul, you actually made some good points in your comment, but there were too many personal attacks for my taste. You’re a new reader, so here’s some advice. When you comment on someone’s site, pretend you’re in their house. I assume you have at least some home training. Feel free to resubmit your comment without the personal attacks. In fact, don’t reference me at all. Attack the argument and dispute whatever point you have problems with. – Admin
LaShawn,
The drive to do this was spearheaded by Ernie Chambers, who is black. He’s also an jerk, an obstructionist and an overall pain in the butt. He’s not really well thought of outside of his constituency.
I’ll be linking your post into the one I did on this subject.
Maybe I missed something, but this does not seemed to be about segregation. Right now, they have one large school district in Omaha, Nebraska with 45,000 students. Under the change, they will have three school districts. The new districts are drawn around current high school attendance boundaries.
I am certainly not a lawyer, but why would that be illegal. I used to teach in the San Antonio, Texas. That city had seven independent school districts. There are certain funding advantages to having independent school district with independent tax bases. Each district competes against the other for qualified teaches. They offer different incentives, and different pay scales
Since the people are not force to live in any particular boundary, and the students are not being transported to any particular district based on their race how does this qualify as segregation?
Lawyers will argue that even though there’s no intent to separate by race, that’s what it amounts to. The courts will strictly scrutinize laws that are racially discriminatory or if their effect is racially discriminatory.
According to the article, this is what will happen if the law goes into effect:
“Boundaries for the newly created districts would be drawn using current high school attendance areas. That would result in four possible scenarios; in every scenario, two districts would end up with a majority of students who are racial minorities.”
We should have neighborhood schools. They worked in the 50s up north. There wasn’t legal racial segregration. People who cared about education, followed the laws and covenants of neighborhoods lived together. They watched out for each other (the villages), and everyone got a good education. In other areas, people tended to care more about drinking, using drugs, and being involved with crimes. This is a fact. Some wanted to look past The Truth.
I live in Lincoln, as a senior student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and currently I am an Intern in the Attorney General’s office. And I can certainly say that the whole process has been exploited by all parties in the state. The Omaha Public School board who are only enforcing a law on the books that gives them the authority to annex schools within their district boundaries. These are the Millard, Ralston, and Elkhorn schools who are mostly white and have a higher tax base and therefore better funding. And it is easy to understand why better test scores compared to the minority, poor Omaha schools. The OPS school board however are not interested in the education of the minority children in Omaha or the schools in the outlying districts as well, they simply want the money and power that would come with annexing the other schools.
So this is where the politicians in the state come in. The Legislature has come up with many plans and endured much scrutiny during this process, untill LB 1024 was proposed which would keep all districts at their current boundaries but introduce a “super” district called a learning community. And this learning community would include all the schools in the 2 counties and include them in a common tax base. Meaning that the wealthy Millard, Ralston, and Elkhorn would have to share funds with OPS. This is where the bill stalled. Untill Sen. Chambers, who is a black barber with law degree from the state’s best law school, proposed an amendement to LB 1024 that essentially scraped the previous plan and instead broke the OPS district up into 3 smaller districts allowing for more local control. This amendment passed almost without question and it wasn’t untill the following days that some Senators realized that the smartest person in the Legislature, Sen. Chambers had outsmarted them again. Becuase it is hard to imagine that Sen. Chambers who represents North Omaha would not realize that race being a suspect class when it comes to state actions that this bill would not be struck down upon judicial review.
The AG has expressed this concern that he questions the Constitutionality of the Bill, and the Governor Heineman, who is in a losing battle with our past football coach for the Republican nomination in May is trying to gain support by opposing the OPS action. So that is why he signed the bill. And another amendment to breakup all school districts with more than 25,000 students so more control could be had by parents also failed. Showing that this action was only meant to break-up the power currently held by OPS.
In the end this case is going to go to court and baring some unforseen event OPS is probably going to win unfortunately because their concern is not the children they teach. Because OPS instead of working to improve the education they provide instead paid lawyers to dissect the laws looking for a way for them to get more power. It is just to bad they did it using the law.
Any validity?
De Gaulle et les communautés étrangères en France…
“Si une communauté n’est pas acceptée, c’est qu’elle ne donne pas de bons produits, sinon elle est admise sans problème. Si elle se plaint de racisme à son égard, c’est parce qu’elle est porteuse de désordre. Quand elle ne fournit que du bien, tout le monde lui ouvre les bras. Mais il ne faut pas qu’elle vienne chez nous imposer ses moeursâ€.
(De Gaulle, mon père. Philippe De Gaulle)
HOMESCHOOLING ANYONE! Let’s segregate ourselves to our own families. This way if students fail, there’s nobody outwardly to blame.
I’m a proud graduate of Omaha Central. Which at the time I graduated (June ‘62) was one of the top ten High Schools in America.
I wonder if the school still is as good?
I attended Omaha Public Schools, K-7th grade. I lived on the outskirts of Omaha and attended my local elementary school, which was less than a mile a way- my sister and I would walk when the weather was good. During the winter the moms would carpool.
In 2nd grade, I was bussed to an inner-city school. The quality of my education did not suffer and I made many friends, including my my first black friends.
In 6th grade, I was bussed again, this time as a volunteer to attend a magnet school for “gifted” students. This school was in the inner city, and wasn’t really a magnet school. It was a regular school that had suburban students bussed in for a few gifted programs. The city must have ginned up a gifted program in order to raise the numbers of desegregated schools; they had to have raked in extra federal dollars for the effort.
This time, my education suffered, especially in math. I spent 6th grade doing math that I had mastered in 4th grade. We had a computer lab and a science class, which was good, but every other subject was a complete waste of my time. (I never really got back on track as far as math was concerned). My mom still blames herself for letting me go there.
And my black friends from 2nd grade? Many of them were at the magnet school; most of them shunned me and the other kids. The lines had already been drawn, and with the exception of a few high-achievers who took part in the gifted classes, the lines were never to be crossed.
This is an aspect that’s always confused me. Blacks fought for over 100 years against segregation, and when it’s finally dead as an institution and effectively gone from most of the country by practice… the demands for segregation start FROM BLACKS??
Black student unions, black only dorms, black studies, blacks only classes… what must the ghost of Martin Luther King jr be thinking?
La Shawn, so sorry to offend.
Anyways, back to the issue at hand. For your reference, there is a breakdown of the 10 school districts in the Omaha Metro Area prior to this legislation at the bottom of my post.
Prior to this bill being passed the Omaha Metro Area was split into 10 different school districts with 10 different tax bases. Approximately 45% of the students in the Omaha Metro Area all went to school in one district, the Omaha Public Schools District, or, the OPS. The OPS contained the vast majority of minority and lower income students. 56% of OPS students were minorities and 55% were low income.
The OPS was rapidly deterioriating because the other nine Suburban Districts by and large got a larger slice of the tax pie. So, about a year ago the OPS made a move to take over the Suburban Districts. This would mean the city of Omaha would all be controlled by one board, and all autonomy that the Suburban Districts had once had would be lost.
Naturally, the Suburban Districts opposed the proposed OPS takeover. So, this fight has been brewing in the city of Omaha for a year or so. This legislation was introduced in reaction to and in order to resolve the fight.
This is what was done:
All 10 Districts were lumped into one “Learning Community”, meaning that all ten districts are now under one Tax Umbrella. That is to say that now Urban Schools will be funded by not only Urban taxes but Suburban Taxes as well.
Now, each district gets one seat on the Learning Community Super Board, which governs how funds are split amongst districts.
This is where the size of OPS becomes important. As I said, OPS serves 45% of the students in the Omaha Metro Area. It would’ve been downright unfair to have such a large block of students be represented by only one out of ten votes on the Learning Community Super Board. As such, it was written into the legislation that OPS was to be split into 3 districts, and those districts were to be drawn on geographic lines.
In short, splitting up OPS was a necessity in making the Learning Community function fairly.
Now, you said this: “Let me make a distinction. If a school is mostly black because whites have left the district, that’s not illegal.”
I’m glad to see you made that distinction, because in splitting up OPS geographically, we run into the fact that the city of Omaha is racially distributed along very clear geographic lines. They could split up OPS so each of the three districts would be more racially diverse, but it would require some very strange border designation.
Should we simply redraw every district in the Omaha Metro Area so the other 9 districts that are largely white and middle to upper class are also more diverse?
Of course not, because as you said, “If a school is mostly black because whites have left the district, that’s not illegal.”
As for this comment: “The people in Omaha are fed up with black parents complaining about the achievement gap between students, so they’re giving blacks their own schools. Does this mean the faculty will be predominantly black, too? Hmmm…”
This couldn’t be further from the truth. As I explained, this situation is a result of an aggressive move by the OPS to take over the nine other Suburban Districts in the Omaha Metro Area. The people of Omaha, and the people of America for that matter, have historically not paid heed to the complaints of poor black people. This situation is not an exception.
So my question becomes, La Shawn: what is your problem with this legislation?
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Break Down of Districts
Elkhorn:
5% Minority, 8% Low Income
Total K-12: 3,952
Ralston:
21% Minority, 36% Low Income
Total K-12: 3,030
Douglas County West:
7% Minority, 30% Low Income
Total K-12: 716
Bennington:
4% Minority, 11% Low Income
Total K-12: 704
Gretna:
3% Minority, 6% Low Income
Total K-12: 2,084
South Sarpy:
4% minority, 14% Low Income
Total K-12: 1,070
Westside:
15% Minority, 21% Low Income
Total K-12: 6,028
Papillion-Lavista:
12% Minority, 17% Low Income
Total K-12: 8,570
Bellevue:
22% Minority, 23% Low Income
Total K-12: 9,008
Millard:
9% Minority, 9% Low Income
Total K-12: 20,427
OPS (The District that is being split up):
56% Minority, 55% Low Income
Total K-12: 45,228
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Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
BTW for those not familiar with the Area Bellvue is the home of Offutt Air Base. It is in the main a military town.
I hope this segregation fails. La Shawn, would “dis-assimilation” be an actual word? If this racist initiative is allowed to stand, how can we tell Latinos they must assimilate? How can we tell Muslims they will not be allowed to have Shariah Law in Dearborn? Let’s not revert to segregation-it would defeat us more surely than the Islamists ever could, for a house divided against itself cannot stand.
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