The New York Times takes a look at how school choice in Harlem has not been successful for all but does admit that there are more better performing schools uptown than a decade ago. Harlem has been the neighborhood that the nation has been looking at as far as school reform is concerned and overall the new public charter schools are providing a quality education for families uptown. Lotteries to get into charters have been tough in recent years but with the increased push to expand this type of public school model into the system, 3,000 more students were accepted this year than last.
The article is a little cynical about a majority of other public schools not performing in the neighborhood but the brighter side of the picture is the fact that even more charters are opening in Harlem. Harlem Village Academy (above photo) will be opening right off of Marcus Garvey Park and the new Harlem Children's Zone at West 129th will accept students into its doors a year from now. Read the entire article in the Times:
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We pay a lot of lip-service in this country to children and education. Yet when it comes down to rollin' up our sleeves, puttin' on our britches and gettin' down in the dirt, our failures are disturbing.
ReplyDeleteHow on earth can opening new schools be considered a solution when we have not figured out what the problems were with the old ones? The entire system has become a lottery where some parents win, the majority lose. Yet we insist on talking about the value of education and its importance in making a good life.
Our inconsistencies sentence low income and economically disadvantaged kids (and some middle class, too) to ill-fated lives and erode the American presence on the world stage in science and mathematics
Success in education comes from parental involvement, if children are born into absentee father families, the schools cannot be expected to make up for this disadvantaged childhood. Parents should wait until married and financially stable before bringing children into this world, I am sure then we would see a much better academic success rate. Unfortunately our leaders do not want to have this conversation, so the dysfunction continues.
ReplyDeleteIf the opposition party has its way even more babies will be having babies.
DeleteWestsider, that is terribly disingenuous of you! Success in education obviously does NOT come from parental involvement. The Times article itself details parents who are advocating for their children, some without any success at all because the system in their community is dysfunctional.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you refer to the pristine white communities with their two parent households where the father works and the mother stays at home and maintains the household, circa 1950s.
That is not the subject of the article. We need solutions not judgments.
Sorry but you are so wrong on that one, the common wisdom is parental involvement is crucial to academic success. If you do not believe me, look it up, please.
DeleteTotally agree w/Westsider. True on the most basic level--doubt if the child hanging with his mum in front of the building at 11pm is going to do as well as the child being sheparded along by her dad so she won't be late for school first thing in the morning.
DeleteThere is nothing common about wisdom! But no, I am sorry. In my haste to respond I left out information. Parental involvement is critical, but that is simply ONE component of a three pronged issue that includes parents, students, and teachers/administration. There are parents who are involved and to what end when they are subject to a dysfunctional system (the subject of the Times article)?
ReplyDeleteAgain, you are nursing judgments and prejudices which cloud the real issues here that have to do with dysfunctional school systems in minority school districts. In successful school districts it is not SIMPLY a matter of parental involvement but harmony between the teachers and the administration that involves dynamic leadership and adept management of the resources. These are conspicuously absent in crippled school districts.
That's a totally different premise with which few would argue.
DeleteSM, agreed, now a totally different premise, an about face from “success does NOT come from parental involvement” to now “Parental involvement is critical”, education is not just for those in high school.
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