Seattle Schools Community Forum

One of the charms that ed reformers like to dangle before public school parents is choice.  It's quite the appealing siren call because 1) we're Americans and we love choices (even when they can overwhelm and even paralyze us) and 2) the idea that "wealthy people have choices when it comes to their children's schooling and so should you." Number two is false on so many levels.  Wealthy people have many more choices period.  Houses, cars, vacations, clothes, colleges, you name it - wealthy people have so many more choices.  What's interesting is that the schools in our district are - almost to a school - full.  Now is that because there are more people in our city? Maybe but the private schools are full as well.  (Imagine if even half those private school parents came back.) Here's a great essay by Chicago Schools' parent, Julie Vassilatos, The Frightening Implications of School Choice (bold hers, red highlight mine.) Because "choice" of...

Hillary Clinton seems to be ever-more nuancing her ideas about public education.  A couple of weeks ago she said this (from the Washington Post: ) Clinton also said that public charter schools “should be supplementary, not a substitute” for traditional public schools.  Then, at a closed door meeting with teachers and paraprofessionals on Nov. 9th she said this:

In the United States. From the NY Times : In a report released Friday by the Southern Education Foundation , researchers found that 51 percent of children in public schools qualified for the lunches in 2013, which means that most of them come from low-income families. By comparison, 38 percent of public school students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in 2000. According to the report, which analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics , a majority of students in 21 states are poor. Close to two-thirds of those states are in the South, which has long had a high concentration of poor students. In Mississippi, for example, close to three-fourths of all public school students come from low-income families. But the West also has a large and growing proportion of low-income students. Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada have high rates of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. What say you to that, ed reformers? ...