idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
That's a completely white-washed, middle-class way of looking at it. My brother teaches in a charter school, and his students are at least 95% black. The majority of them are from poor inner-city households. Most of them don't have two parents, many of them are being raised by grandparents, and plenty have parents in prison.
The fact that they were enrolled in the charter school is amazing in itself--it shows they DO have people who care about their education. Thing is, that's pretty much as far as it goes.
Yes. Because their parents care. Those who don't wont spend the effort to get their kid to a charter or private school. Of if they do, they give up on it after a short period of time because it turns out that it wasn't the school, but them (or their kid) that was the problem to begin with.
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It isn't because their parents/guardians don't care, it's that their parents/guardians are spending all their energy on just trying to keep some semblence of stability in these kids' lives. They don't have time to help them with their homework (which they couldn't even do, because I can't even use the newest ways of doing mathematics).
That's not what I'm talking about though. I agree with you. But you get that just because a kid is black and from a broken home, doesn't mean that kid is automatically a bad student. The whole point of providing tuition funding for private schools is to allow those kids who's biggest problem is the school they're in to go somewhere else. The fact that there are lots of other kids who's problem is their parents, or themselves and therefore no movement to another school will help them, aren't the issue here.
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And I don't know what you are envisioning schools to be like, but they aren't like day cares. We are talking about the daycare mentality that parents have, not actual similarities between the two.
And more often public schools are expected to fulfill that need. I'm not talking about nap time here. I'm talking about how for some students, the schools primary job (not by choice of course) is merely to keep them on campus for the school day and feed them lunch. And in some schools, the ratio of those students to the ones who are actually trying to learn is high.
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The reason that private schools are often viewed differently is because they are exclusive to upper classes, where these aren't issues.
Yes. Because all wealthy kids are brilliant students and all poor kids are dumb as bricks. Or maybe, we give the kids who have potential to learn but were unfortunate enough to be born in unfortunate situations a better chance? There's an idea!