Eminent Domain Stuff
New London Update (2/24/06)
Bad NLDC!
Coverage of the Rally at New London's City Hall (w/ pics)
Friday, May 21, 2004
Blacks and Private Schools
The NYT has a great article (yes even a blind pig) on the flight of black students to private schools (hat tip Volokh). This is an amazing, if not entirely surprising, trend...and I love it. Here is a group of parents that have decided public school sucks and their children deserve better, even if it means sacrificing:
Every month, she and her husband send the school a check for $900, the equivalent of almost two weeks' take-home pay from her job. They make the sacrifice because Trey Whitfield offers their children a demonstrably safer and better education than what is available at either P.S. 158 or their local school, Public School 149.
Now, regardless of what anyone might tell you, this is the reason people will put themselves under severe financial burden to send their kids to private school:
Like the Catholic schools favored by many black parents, the Whitfield School has stuck to instruction in basic skills. The other day, the blackboard in Louise Browne-Jackson's first-grade classroom was equally divided into sections about phonics (sh, en), grammar (contractions) and mathematics (place value in three-digit numbers). Classes routinely recite aloud. Every pupil in pre-kindergarten is required to learn to read.
Imagine that, a school with standards.
So here we have a bunch of people making difficult personal economic decisions that allow their children to attend decent schools. Still, I am sure there are some families that simply cannot afford any private school. Can you imagine what this country would look like if we overhauled public schools (or threw them out all together) and allowed people to actually choose where their children attend school? And…allowing them to do so without having to pay taxes to support failing public schools? I don’t have any expectation that it’ll happen in my lifetime…but maybe some day.
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The NYT has a great article (yes even a blind pig) on the flight of black students to private schools (hat tip Volokh). This is an amazing, if not entirely surprising, trend...and I love it. Here is a group of parents that have decided public school sucks and their children deserve better, even if it means sacrificing:
Every month, she and her husband send the school a check for $900, the equivalent of almost two weeks' take-home pay from her job. They make the sacrifice because Trey Whitfield offers their children a demonstrably safer and better education than what is available at either P.S. 158 or their local school, Public School 149.
Now, regardless of what anyone might tell you, this is the reason people will put themselves under severe financial burden to send their kids to private school:
Like the Catholic schools favored by many black parents, the Whitfield School has stuck to instruction in basic skills. The other day, the blackboard in Louise Browne-Jackson's first-grade classroom was equally divided into sections about phonics (sh, en), grammar (contractions) and mathematics (place value in three-digit numbers). Classes routinely recite aloud. Every pupil in pre-kindergarten is required to learn to read.
Imagine that, a school with standards.
So here we have a bunch of people making difficult personal economic decisions that allow their children to attend decent schools. Still, I am sure there are some families that simply cannot afford any private school. Can you imagine what this country would look like if we overhauled public schools (or threw them out all together) and allowed people to actually choose where their children attend school? And…allowing them to do so without having to pay taxes to support failing public schools? I don’t have any expectation that it’ll happen in my lifetime…but maybe some day.
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