Are the residents of Ladera Heights, in Los Angeles, "racist"? Ladera Heights is dominated by wealthy people living in spacious homes near Los Angeles. It shares a public school system with neiboring Inglewood, which is dominated by poor blacks and mestizos. The school district is awful, and the Ladera Heights residents mostly have their kids in private schools. They would rather their tax dollars fund an excellent public school that they would be happy to send their children to. They do not believe that this is possible in conjunction with the Inglewood residents.
Nadir: Are you certain that the Ladera Heights residents are racist? Is it possible that they don't care about the "race" of their children's classmates? Is it possible that their single motivation is get their own kids into excellent schools, and that they have given up on their attempts to do so with Inglewood parents, and that their conclusion is devoid of any racial descrimination?
Please answer the question *BEFORE* you read the article.
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The ideal solution, as I see it, would be school vouchers, plus a complete rebuild of the Inglewood school system, involving the punchlist that I've presented before (non-compulsory attendance, academic-only classes, etc.). Under that circumstance, I have confidence that just as in days long past, families of very different social circumstances can have their children successfully learn together. Our beloved Ben Carson program proves this. But the people who run the Inglewood public school system, and their political allies (democrats) will forbid that from happening. Thus the ideal solution is not on the table. The only possible solution available to the families in the wealthy neighborhood is to form their own public school district.
If I were working with the wealthy parents, I would suggest that they make place in their school system for 100 or so kids from Inglewood, on a scholarship basis. One of the things that upsets the wealthy parents the most is the thug-acting kids not getting perminantly expelled. Letting some properly behaving Inglewood student in on scholarships could provide some help to Inglewood, without spoiling a new school system.
Public schools can be fixed. If they gave as much effort to changing their public schools as they will place into a secession effort, they could make those changes in the school system.
I disagree. I believe that changing the public schools would take an effort like changing the US car companies. Both serve to satisfy not their customers, but ancient union contracts. Fortunately for US car consumers, they have alternatives. The poor K-12 consumers are forced to pay for failing public schools, then try to purchase private schools, if they can.
Secession for these people will be much easier I am sure than trying to get thugs out of the existing school system.
Have you read the article?
I read the article.
But Culver City doesn't want them. Private schools may temporarily solve the problem for these particular parents, but the real losers are the students whose parents can't afford to take them out of already underfunded public schools.
Under voucher initiatives, their schools would continue to deteriorate until they close. Then communities that house poor people, like Inglewood, will become even more infested with crime. Those criminals will start roving into Ladera Heights and Culver City in search of prey.
But by then it will be someone else's problem, won't it?
Milwakee has gone to a voucher system. What you hypothesize did not happen. Instead, what the pro-voucher people hypothesized did happen:
1. Several public schools did close.
2. Private schools replaced the public schools that closed.
3. The public schools that remained open drastically changed in order attract and retain their "customers".
4. No students went without schools.
These results are documented in a recent ABC news special, which I have saved on my wow tivo. Why not at least try a radical solution to a radical problem? I am always amazed at how the anti-voucher people know exactly what would happen if vouchers were tried.
Culver City doesn't "not want" poor kids. They don't want disruptive thugs. Public schools (as currently configured) are required to house the thugs; private schools (such as the Ben Carson program) are free to eject students who distrupt productive activities. Nowhere in the article to the Culver City object to having their children attend schools with poor kids who behave themselves.
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