Back To The Barricades On Tutoring? Mulder? And, Your Chance To Be A Reviewer

Politics K-12 reports on the Administration’s pushback on tutoring.  I’m not sure how a blanket ban makes any more sense than a blanket requirement to provide tutoring.  Provider quality is very mixed and states generally do a lousy job screening and certifying providers.  Seems like fixing those problems are a better use of effort than fighting over this.

I want to believe!  David Kirp turns in a long op-ed in The Times about the benefits of school integration but then concludes with this:

In theory it’s possible to achieve a fair amount of integration by crossing city and suburban boundaries or opening magnet schools attractive to both minority and white students. But the hostile majority on the Supreme Court and the absence of a vocal pro-integration constituency make integration’s revival a near impossibility.

I’m all for it, but, to put it plainly, it’s as likely to snow Hershey’s Kisses as for this to happen at scale given politics, housing patterns, city and town boundaries, and school boundaries. So doesn’t this make those pursuing other strategies to improve school quality for low-income and minority kids, you know, pragmatists?  Even within jurisdictions with great racial and economic diversity (and liberal voting records) there is a lot of resistance to just changing school boundaries and enrollment patterns. Meanwhile, many schools that are integrated on paper are much less so within classrooms.

More Promise? If you want to be a peer reviewer for the Promise Neighborhood’s competition, here’s your big chance.

2 Replies to “Back To The Barricades On Tutoring? Mulder? And, Your Chance To Be A Reviewer”

  1. Regarding the integration article in the NY Times, I found the following comment, by “WP” in California, particularly insightful and wanted to re-print it here:

    “If I was a parent who had taught my child to read at age 4, I would not want him or her to be placed in a class with many students who will barely know how to read by age 8. If I have a child who sits quietly in class and listens to the teacher, I would not want her placed in a class where disruptive students often yell and scream and the teacher has to spend much class time not teaching but trying to quiet the other students. I would want her in a class with other quiet students. If I have a child who is extremely interested in learning and achieving, I would not want her to be placed in a class with a majority of students who are not interested in achievement, but who constantly make fun of the class material, some of whom obtain peer status based on how much contempt they have for the whole learning process. If I had a child, I would want to put that child in a school with other students who didn’t rob or assault others, and then have these robberies and assaults ignored by an enabling, co-dependent staff and faculty too weak in the knees and full of white guilt to discipline a black student who robbed another student.

    Many parents think this way, and as long as options exist, they’re going to put their children in schools where the environment is conducive to that child actually learning, rather than being bored and frustrated to tears amid disruptive, disrespectful fellow students whom the teacher never completely manages to win over to the value of learning.”

  2. Excellent comment.

    But according to Whitney Tilson and Michelle Rhee (through her personal experience), all of that would be conquered by an High Quality Teacher.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.