Supplemental: What makes a good school good?

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2014

One commenter’s basic idea: Last month, The Atlantic featured “Segregation Now...,” the 10,000-word cover report about Tuscaloosa’s schools.

This month, The Atlantic topped itself. It featured Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 16,000-word cover report, “The Case for Reparations.”

In our general view, Coates’ piece combines superb modern history with a puzzling sense of what is possible in our politics and our national discourse. We may limn the piece in future weeks.

In the meantime, Coates’ piece has produced a lot of discussion. This includes a comment by one reader which struck us as highly instructive concerning the way many people perceive low-income schools.

When David Frum challenged Coates’ piece, a reader named Wendy offered the comment shown below. She seems to answer a basic, very important question:

What makes a good school good?

In our view, this reader’s comment paints a common picture of what is “wrong” with “low-performing,” low-income schools. We’re posting the bulk of the comment:
COMMENT TO FRUM POST (6/3/14): The damage done by red-lining shows itself in neighborhoods. "Reparations" (or reparative spending) could address that.

Put highly-resourced top-notch public schools in the crappiest, poorest, highest crime neighborhoods. Small class sizes, well-equipped science labs, new textbooks and enough computers and an excellent library, honors and AP classes, arts and athletics and breakfast and lunch and field trips and tutoring and robotics and Shakespeare and music production and the kitchen sink. All the things the most expensive/most selective private schools charge top-dollar for.

Guaranteed admission to any kid who lives within 5 blocks and shows willing. The rest of the slots—half go to a good-odds lottery for kids within 10 blocks, the other half to a less-good odds lottery for the rest of the city...

It's not cheap. But it gives those kids what their parents would have been able to give them if their grandparents hadn't been screwed.
That comment sketches a view which seems to be common, especially on the left. In our view, Nikole Hannah-Jones paints a similar portrait at times in “Segregation Now...”

Wendy seems to think these things about low-income urban schools:

Low-performing urban schools are basically under-resourced. They don’t offer enough AP courses. Their science labs aren’t well-equipped. Class sizes are too large. The textbooks are old.

The libraries in these schools are no good. They don’t have enough computers. They need more field trips and more Shakespeare—and more money for the various things the best private schools have.

To us, this is a portrait of urban schools straight outta 1965. We think this picture may tend to keep liberals from understanding the nature of our educational challenges.

Don’t get us wrong! Presumably, plenty of low-income schools are under-resourced in some of the ways Wendy mentions. But we aren’t inclined to think that Wendy understands the principal challenges faced by these “low-performing” schools.

In the next few days, we’ll look at the way Hannah-Jones seems to reinforce this portrait at times in “Segregation Now...” We’ll tell you why we think this portrait misses the most basic point.

Today, we’ll offer another post, concerning a recent cable presentation which reinforced Wendy’s picture of urban schools. This presentation was made on Monday night’s Chris Hayes program.

Yesterday, we discussed this Monday night show, but we forgot to mention this particular presentation by one public school parent. On a journalistic basis, we thought Hayes did very poor work in enabling this presentation.

What makes a good school good? We think the most basic part of the answer is fairly obvious. That said, the liberal world seems to be full of people who don’t seem to know what it is.

On Monday, Hayes reinforced Wendy's view of low-income urban schools. On a journalistic basis, we don’t think he should have done so.

Please see our next post.

18 comments:

  1. Glas you reminded us the article was 10,000 words long. Many have forgotten and new readers come every day.

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    1. How many words has Somerby spent discussing this 10,000 word article?

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    2. I am not sure. Do we know how to solve the gaps yet?

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  2. A whole lot of liberals have no idea what makes a good school good. Be sure not to tell them.

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    1. If you think about what makes a good school before someone supplies you with a possible answer, you will be better prepared to evaluate whether you agree or disagree with that suggestion. That is a basic of good teaching. If you now want to criticize Somerby for approaching his blog the way a good teacher would a classroom, have at it.

      You are probably the kind of person who wants to know who dunnit on the first page of a mystery novel, or who cannot wait until the end of the show to find out what happens. I have a friend who always reads the last page of a novel to find out whether she wants to put in the effort of reading a book. Too bad life isn't like that too. Oh wait, it is, everyone dies at the end.

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    2. What makes a good teacher?

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  3. On a journalistic basis, selecting one blog comment out of 2250 seems just this side of peculiar. Especially when the comment is posted because TDH wants to represent, based on no evidence whatsoever, that it represents "a common" view of something.

    It is even more peculiar because what is deleted from the comment makes it clear that is not even on the the topic selected by the blogger doing the reposting, but on that of the response article from which it is plucked and the article to which the response is written, neither of which have been covered by the blogger doing the comment plucking, pasting and reposting.

    On second thought, it is not just on this side of peculiar. It is heinous.
    No, on third thought, just disengenuos. A common practice of the blogger.

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    Replies
    1. We apologize for not signing our work.

      KZ

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    2. Here is the comment that Bob presented "the bulk of" that is conveniently the first one, atop 2,.254 others.

      Please note the paragraph that Bob conveniently disappears that puts the comment in an entirely different context. "Wendy", the author isn't talking about education reform. She is addressing neighborhood revitalization:

      The damage done by red-lining shows itself in neighborhoods; "reparations" (or reparative spending) could address that.

      Put highly-resourced top-notch public schools in the crappiest, poorest, highest crime neighborhoods. Small class sizes, well-equipped science labs, new textbooks and enough computers and an excellent library, honors and AP classes, arts and athletics and breakfast and lunch and field trips and tutoring and robotics and Shakespeare and music production and the kitchen sink. All the things the most expensive/most selective private schools charge top-dollar for.

      Guaranteed admission to any kid who lives within 5 blocks and shows willing. The rest of the slots -- half go to a good-odds lottery for kids within 10 blocks, the other half to a less-good odds lottery for the rest of the city. Any jobs at the school that don't require an advanced degree (lunch lady, groundskeepers, janitors, etc) are also only for people who live within 10 blocks.

      Suddenly, that's a desirable neighborhood. Protections for tenants when it redevelops -- if 4 houses are torn down to build a 50 unit apartment building, 4 of those units go to the people who used to rent those four houses (at the same rent they used to pay).

      It's not cheap. But it gives those kids what their parents would have been able to give them if their grandparents hadn't been screwed.

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    3. And once again, the narrative Bob is trying to sell about the above "comment" from Frum's blog?

      "In our view, this reader’s comment paints a common picture of what is “wrong” with “low-performing,” low-income schools."

      Disengenuous, KZ? You are being much too kind.

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