The failure of No Child left Behind....
The failure of NCLB is a crime in itself. Many people thought that it was the answer to all of the problems of the educational system and lower social economic class, such as the poor African American community. It is not the solution to the problem and now we are forced to ask ourselves why.The first problem is obvious. There are no consequences for those who violate the law of NCLB. There is no punishment. What is the federal government going to do...take away federal funding? Yes, they should.
The failure of NCLB is a crime in itself. Many people thought that it was the answer to all of the problems of the educational system and lower social economic class, such as the poor African American community. It is not the solution to the problem and now we are forced to ask ourselves why.The first problem is obvious. There are no consequences for those who violate the law of NCLB. There is no punishment. What is the federal government going to do...take away federal funding? Yes, they should.
Some of you may or may not know that each school that is rated a charter or a magnet school receives federal grants more than a regular school. There is a condition these school are supposed to make special exceptions for those social economic groups that are at a disadvantage. A magnet school like Buist with a waiting list is supposed to put the disadvantaged child's name in the lottery twice for each time they put in the name of a child with little or no disadvantage.The main goal of NCLB was to integrate the kids who were disadvantaged with advantaged kids so they had the opportunity to go to a better school and have a chance at achieving a higher education.There are open spots in the middle school classes of Buist Academy. These are spots that the principal herself says she has a hard time filling. Today, I learned of a child that was denied a NCLB transfer to Buist as well as a regular middle school in Mount Pleasant... a child that would be in one of these hard to fill spots. This is a child who is being denied her right under NCLB to transfer to another school. The district states the parent did not complete her request within the alotted 2 week deadline.
Last year, these parents had until mid July to complete these NCLB transfer requests. This parent is African American and of a lower social economic class. You can draw your own conclusions, but I am going to tell you mine. The letters that the Charleston County School district sends out are hard for me to understand, nonetheless, a parent who has only a mid high school education. There is no question this parent is African American.
I think The district is not allowing this child to move to a school that was a NCLB transfer option in Mount Pleasant because she is African American. I know other parents who have transfered their children in the June and July months to other schools without a problem....wait they were white. I wish someone could prove me wrong...but I know you won't be able to. The cards in Charleston County School district are stacked against the poor African American.
Next lets talk about the numbers game.
To learn more about nclb visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml
2 comments:
Why is it that magnet schools in Charleston County with white majority student populations are not subject to NCLB transfers according to CCSD? But magnet schools with African-American majorities must accept NCLB transfers? Why is it that African-American students who request transfers under NCLB are disproportionately steered to schools with large minority populations while white students seeking NCLB transfers generally get the schools of their choice which is typically a white majority school? The final insult is that the Buist Academy principal acknowledged in a CCSD Policy Committee meeting last spring that she didn't seek or encourage qualified African-American students who were attending downtown schools. She said that if these miniority students were encouraged to tranfer to the academically oriented Buist magnet school, the loss of these students with high test schools would "hurt" the report cards of the schools they were abandoning. It should be noted that in a rare example of an African-American transfer to Buist in the 8th grade, a student who had attended the failing Burke middle school program, the student struggled but eventually excelled at Buist, despite having been denied admission in the lower grades. That student was recently accepted at the Academic Magnet High School. It is very likely this wouldn't have happened if the student was denied even this one year at a school like Buist. How many spaces in last year's 7th and 8th grades went empty at Buist that could have been filed by students from so many failing schools downtown? Who gives the Buist principal the right to play God when a qualified student has an opportunity to transfer into Buist? The answer is that the Charleston County School Board does when it sends the message that it enforces its administrative and educational policies with discrimination and preferencial treatment based on race. These examples show that CCSD continues to be motivated by race and not merit as prescribed by the established policies.
We also need to recognize the severity of prejudices within the same race. If I am a well-dressed and well-spoken mother of a black child, I have a much better chance of my child getting the transfer he/she needs. We actually discriminate against the children of CCSD based on their parents! How pathetic is that?? We want parental involvement. In fact, we blame the LACK of parental involvement on the failure of our schools. THEN when the parents of these children get involved and demand a better school for their children to attend, we shut them out.
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