Clearly black children are not achieving at the rate that white children are, but that’s no reason to suspend the gifted program. Yes, the white kids are getting more academic and overall support at home, and this can only be fixed by getting all of the kids this kind of support, not by kneecapping the white children (who are not super privileged or they wouldn’t be in Boston Public Schools to begin with).
Ridiculous policies like this are why we sold our house in the city and left for a $2 million house in the suburbs, where the price of admission means that every kid has lots of support at home, depleting the city schools of one more kid and dragging them down even further.
Arguably the overall societal gains are higher from turning a future accountant into a future scientist than improving the 25th percentile student’s outcome anyways.
This is the first comment I’ve seen that is in touch with the reality of Boston Public Schools. The Boston public system was destroyed by forced integration that caused people with financial means to withdraw and move to the suburbs and/or put their children into private school. The racist motives for the initial split may have faded, but the legacy of that public/private split continues in a way that is self-reinforcing. No matter how woke you are now, nobody who can afford to do otherwise wants to send their kid to a public school that is failing based on every available measure.
Almost every major American city has the same story of a stripped city core where even as young professionals gentrify the real estate in the area they don’t do the same to the schools by sending their kids to private school. A family will live in a neighborhood with a gang reputation (eg San Francisco’s Mission or Viz Valley) before they send their kids to a bad school.
Ridiculous policies like this are why we sold our house in the city and left for a $2 million house in the suburbs, where the price of admission means that every kid has lots of support at home, depleting the city schools of one more kid and dragging them down even further.
Arguably the overall societal gains are higher from turning a future accountant into a future scientist than improving the 25th percentile student’s outcome anyways.