a reminder that miss major has a retirement fund, still not even half funded after being open for 4 years. if you’re able, you should consider a monthly pledge, or whatever you are able
As a Garfield grad, I can remember forums held by the Black Student Union my junior year that taught me a lot.
Black students talked about being the only black person in their all-white AP classes feeling as though they couldn’t ask questions, that they were constantly questioned on their legitimacy, and their academic advisors told them they were not prepared to even take AP’s. They also spoke about not even knowing that APP (Accelerated Progress Program, the highest tracking program) existed until high school, when it was too late to get in.
I witnessed as the white woman, our biology teacher, straight-up told 2 black men sitting at my table, “Oh, you’re switching out of this class right?” Because she doubted their ability to keep up. Instead of taking the time to check in or help them, they turned to me for help, and I grew really resentful of the teacher for her dehumanizing behavior. I could see how she treated the “regular” and “AP” students differently when I took AP Biology, and witnessed her leniency with white AP students who came in late because they had brunch. I also noticed that she played favorites and talked about Wellesley with white women in my work groups who tried to subtly copy my work.
I also remember anecdotes from Asian students, some of which came to high school like straight from another country, and advisors put them in AP Physics and Calc.
Anyway, there’s a lot more that I remember, and acknowledging my positionality as an Asian American, I learned and gain much from the struggles of the Black Power Movement and Black Lives Matter movement, including the black womyn, black trans folks, and black gender non-conforming students and teachers whose work was co-opted by white students and teachers, and prolly some azns too.
But for now I wanted to share a few pages from a chapter called “Educating for Privilege: Dreaming, Streaming, and Creaming” in a book called “The New Class Society | Goodbye American Dream?” by R. Perrucci. Disclaimer this is from a white male perspective and they pretty much don’t even attempt any critical racial thinking.
TRACKING AND STREAMING
One of the main concerns of the privileged class is to protect their advantage and transmit to their children. In a society where educational credentials are used by the privileged to justify their rewards, it is critical that the rules of the game are designed to give advantage to the children of the privileged class. Of course, others can also play by these rules if they choose, but it may be comparable to poker players who try to draw to an inside straight–a risky bet.
Tracking and streaming are two ways in which the rules of the game are used to give advantage to children of the privileged class. In order to understand how these strategies work, it is important to remind ourselves how pre-college U.S. public education is financed. In general, states use state-level taxes “to provide about 48% of the budget for elementary and secondary schools. Local districts contribute around 44%, drawn mostly from local property taxes … The federal government provides about 8% of state education budgets. The amount of money raised through property taxes depends on the tax rate applied to the assessed value of homes and businesses. Communities with more expensive homes and a strong business community can generate more tax revenue for educational purposes than those without these features. We should not that the property tax-school funding link in the Unite dStates is changing. Some states, like Indiana, have shifted school funding from property tax-based formulas to statewide taxing and funding systems. But in Indian and other states that are changing how schools are funded, property taxes remain an important revenue source for funding some features of public education such as buildings and equipment.
In funding public schools, families in more affluent districts may pay higher property taxes in total dollars than families in poorer districts, but tey often pay a lower tax rate than families in poorer districts. This is the case because the aggregate value of their homes and businesses is larger than in poor districts. Thus, a lower tax rate in affluent districts generates more total dollars than a higher rate in a poor district. An additional advantage enjoyed by affluent home owners is the fact that property taxes and mortgage interest are deductible from their federal income taxes, thereby giving the privileged classes a larger indirect subsidy for the educaton of their children than that received in poorer communities.
Evidence from research on the effects of school expenditures indicates that higher per-pupil expenditures for instruction are associated with higher levels of student achievement. Higher student achievement comes from smaller class size and a higher ratio of teachers to students. The more money a school can spend on instruction, the more teachers they can hire and the more money they have to pay experienced teachers. The presence of more teachers and better-paid teachers also improves the social environment of the school, as lighter workloads both improve teacher morale and enable teachers to get to know students better. [Vic’s note: racist white teachers actually make it worse even if there’s more of them, case in point: Bailey Gatzert)
In heterogeneous school districts, where children of the privileged and nonprivileged may be in the same school, there is a single pool of money to fund that school. That money is used to get the best teachers, the most up-to-date instructional technology, the best laboratory equipment, films, computers, and other educational resources. In order to give an advantage to privileged-class children, it is necessary for the school to develop programs that allocate the best teachers [Vic’s note: racist white teachers who have no problem teaching to the test], the most computers, and the best resources to programs that are most likely to be taken by the privileged class. The money is not given to the children of the privileged class, but to programs in which they are more likely to enroll. Thus, tracking was invented–a system that allocates resources to programs that are tied to distinct outcomes–a college preparation or a vocational preparation. Tracking is a form of inequality within schools. #Garfield
Why two schools in the same school district should receive significantly different levels of per-pupil funding can only be understood by examining how school officials, local political leaders, and more affluent parents shape the school budget process in a class-biased manner.
Public School Streaming
In homogeneous school districts, where almost all the children are form the privileged classes or almost all are form lower classes, there is no need for tracking. In the rich schools, almost all children are headed for college. [Examples: Roosevelt High School, Newport High School) Rich school districts have more money to spend on educational programs than poor districts in part because they are located in areas with higher property taxes. Higher assessed property values produce more tax revenues for those school districts because this is how a large share of public schools’ budget is funded in most states.
Even if more states move away from using property taxes as the primary source of school revenue, affluent school districts are likely to continue to find ways to fund the schooling of their children at higher levels than poor districts.
Public School Tracking
Tracking, despite its official noble intentions, is a process that segregates students by ability groupings, curriculum choices, race, and socioeconomic status. It is a process that separates winners from losers in the contest for good jobs and high income [Vic’s note: wtf is this wording tho] and it has been used in primary and secondary education to provide different and unequal education for those believed to be college bound and those belied to be heading directly to the labor market. in the early 1970s, about 85% of public high school used a system of tracking. in The mid-1990s, 2/3rds of high schools were moderately tracked and 60% of elementary schools practiced some form of whole-class ability grouping. In the mid-2000s, the percentages of public high schools and elementary schools using some form of tracking were about the same as in the mid-1990s.
Some tracking programs provide maximum separation, as students remain in the same track for all their courses, and some provide minimum separation with all students taking at least some classes together. (APP kids avoided this by taking orchestra and avoiding other electives.) Placing students in tracks based upon beliefs about their abilities can produce a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Track placement is directly and indirectly related to the class and racial background of students. The direct effects are a result of the expectations that teachers and administrators have of children from higher-class backgrounds. The indirect effect occurs because less privileged children may express less interest in college, receive less peer and parental encouragement to attend college, and lack necessary achievement scores to be selected for placement on the college track. There is substantial agreement among analysis of tracking, based on strong research evidence, that tracking has negative consequences for low-income and non-white students”
Vic’s note: at GHS black students were profiled for skipping class when they were in running start and didn’t have classes during certain periods. Whereas white students skipping class were assumed to be in running start or have a free period, for example
When Brock Turner, a former student at Stanford University in California, was sentenced in June 2016 to only six months for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, many people were understandably outraged. And they were even more angry when Turner was released on September 2nd after serving only half of his already meagre sentence.
In response to this miscarriage of justice, Yana Mazurkevich, a 20-year-old student at Ithaca College in New York, decided to create the photo series you can see below. The project, titled “It Happened”, was made for a sexual assault awareness media platform called Current Solutions, and as you can see, the message is pretty powerful. As Mazurkevich wrote on her Facebook page, “In response to Brock Turner’s early release, this photo series aims to continue the conversation on sexual assault, As well as to raise a huge finger to Turner and his 3-month jail time.” (Source)
This needs to be spread everywhere
It happens when someone you know. It does not happen for no reason. Sexual assault is always about power and abuse of power.
