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The Suburbs & Educational Stratification
R. Alex Whitlock
Nothing brings out the worst in suburbia as much as the issue of education. The Clear Creek Independent School district, which runs the schools southeast of Houston (including my own Clear Lake High School) is building a handful of new schools which require some redistricting. The letters page of the local
Bay Area Citizen demonstrates this quite clearly:
Some remarks 'embarassing'
[...] I must admit though to be actually embarassed by the few parents who would have been better served by keeping their mouths shut. I actually heard a father say, "I don't want my kids going to school with kids from 'that' neighborhood," another said that he only wanted kids to go to school with kids whose parents made as much money as he did and who lived in a house as big as theirs.
Another said that people who pay taxes should be left alone and those people that don't pay taxes (??) should be bussed to portable buildings. I must honestly admit I was floored by those comments. What message do those parents send to their children? That exlusion and bigotry are right? That because I make more money than you - I am better than you? I can only hope not. [...]
Charles Pond
Friendswood
Not knowing Mr. Pond and not having attended the meeting myself, I can't verify this, but even if these words were not spoken (and I believe that they were) they were thought a hundred times over.
I went to working-class Seabrook Intermediate within the CCISD. When asked if they were concerned about my going there, my folks replied that it would probably do me good to know that some people had to fish or man a store for a living. Sure enough, one of the reasons I was appreciative of being able to go to college was meeting some really smart kids whose parents weren't going to be able to afford it.
The fact is that wherever you go to school in the CCISD, you're guaranteed the chance at a good education. The parents ought to be thankful for that rather than splitting hairs over which school they go to. In some ways, thanks to the Ten Percent Rule it's actually advantageous to go to a less stellar high school. But that is of little consolation to a parent that doesn't want their kids going to school with "those" children.
I won't lie and say that there wasn't any difference between students on each side of the tracks. A whole lot of the kids that I went to Seabrook with never made it through high school. By the time I was a senior, some of them were still sophomores. But you have a lot of good kids from medium or below-medium families. Is it really good social policy to rope them in with the "bad" kids just so that your kids don't have to learn what kind of people are out there?
One of the more admirable things about Pocatello, in my view, is how they spread the riches and poorest kids in town between the schools. Most everyone up there wants their kids to go to Century High School (the newest one) and want to avoid Poky High. Instead of catering to the wealthy or taking the easiest path, they have students go across town to their school in order to prevent the financial stratification that a lot of parents from Clear Lake and Friendswood are aiming for.
The CCISD's current superintendent is Sandra Mossman, who was my principal at Seabrook Intermediate. Hopefully she stands her ground on this.
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Observations
Dude. You are in town. I totally did not know.
If you have no objections to seeing me, it'd be cool to say hi over at the Firehouse one night.
Feel free to hop on AIM, or email me.
Alex,
I must honestly say that I can see where some of these parents are coming from, at least in the abstract.
Where I grew up, the majority (I'd say 80%) of your grade school experience was based on region. If you were in area A, you went to grade school A because it was closest. Right after I got into high school, the same happened when they opened a second middle school - which one you went to, for 80% of the students, was dependent on where you lived in the school district (which encompassed the two towns of Oak Creek and Franklin).
The other 20% was kids who were from the "Chapter 220" program... kids who were bussed out from the dead-center of the rattier "third ward" type areas of Milwaukee. Theoretically, Chapter 220 was supposed to be a reciprocal program - a certain number of MPS kids sent to suburban schools, and a certain number of suburban kids bussed in to MPS schools.
In practice, we've never had parity, not even close. Whatever number MPS sends out, they get less than 10% in return, and that 10% go mostly to the schools in MPS that function under the "magnet school" principle, meaning they're the only good parts of the really crappy MPS system.
So what did Chapter 220 mean? Again, the theory went that it encouraged "diversity." "Minority" children (read: from self-segregating all-african-american neighborhoods) were injected into suburbs that, yes, probably had less african-americans than the national average.
The reality was that it really just exported gang problems and MPS problems to suburban schools, degrading the quality of schooling that the suburban kids got while the teachers tried to deal with the chapter 220 kids.
I have no idea whether or not that's a factor in what the Clear Lake parents are saying, but in the abstract I can see their point. Preventing their kids from having to deal with a chapter 220-style situation is a worthy goal.
Mike,
In the case of Clear Lake, it isn't a matter of bussing (which I'm not going to touch right here and now). It's a matter of gerrymandering student allocation to keep, for instance, kids from Seabrook from attending Clear Lake High School (which they've been trying to do forever, with no success).
As far as the "gang problem" being imported and similar disciplinary stuff... I say tough noogies.
Let's say we have Blue(collar) Intermediate and White(collar) High. For the sake of argument, Blue Intermediate has more disciplinary and academic problems as associated with lesser income. Let's also assume that it's not a matter of predominantly black and predominantly white schools... Blue has more Hispanics, White has more Asians, both are predominantly white.
Even if the kids from Blue Int. cause a disproportionate amount of trouble in White High, is it or should it be the district's priority to set up the districts in order to make sure that White High is untainted by the problems of kids from Blue Intermediate? That might be good for the students of White High on the whole, but in what manner is it in the best interest of White-Blue ISD to fence all of the "trouble" kids off together?
It's one thing to go out of your way to economically integrate the schools (that can be a good idea or not be a good idea, depending on the specifics. Good idea for Pocatello, probably not as good an idea in Clear Lake), but to go out of the way in order to fence the poor kids together and rich ones together regardless of actual geography (or even, in my view, equal geographical sense) is not good social or educational policy.
I think kids just need more ass-whippins. Bring back corporal punishment in schools.
Kavey,
You know what? I wouldn't really mind that.
Mike,
I don't want to hear how you wouldn't mind an ass-whippin. :)
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