The "brutal fact" about Louisville's public education system is that for the last 35 years (or two whole generations of public school children) our political leaders have encouraged an experiment in "racial diversity" at the expense of the "neighborhood school." While the diversity goal was originally laudable, over the years the result, academically, has proven to be an abysmal failure. The statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education prove the magnitude of this local failure. They can be found at the Web site schooldiggers.com . Kentucky's K-through-12 public education system ranks somewhere between 40th to 45th in the nation. Of the 154 Kentucky school districts, Jefferson County's ranks 118th. So, after spending billions of dollars for 35 years to buy the buses and gasoline to transport children from hither to yon, the academic result is that Jefferson County ranks in the bottom 25 percent of Kentucky school districts — a state which ranks in the bottom 20 percent of states in the quality of its public education.Ouch. He also points out, in Sunday's Louisville Courier-Journal editorial, what it has done (along with all of the things it has done to itself--also in the name of "Diversity") to the University of Louisville, which continues to languish as a third-tier university:
For 35 years, we've been graduating students from a bottom-feeding public school system and sending them, by droves, to the local university whose academic programs offer bottom-feeding students little, if any, challenge.I have long maintained that one of the worst things ever to happen to public schools--or, should I say, one of worst things the public schools did to themselves--was the school consolidation movement, which acted like a crowbar to separate public schools from the communities which they purported to serve. Miller's point is that the Diversity worship-based social engineering program known as "busing" did the same thing: it destroyed neighborhood schools. Miller, operating on the common sense principle that it might be good to do the things we did when schools worked, advocates bringing back neighborhood schools:
When are we going to cease the noble experiment of a diversity-based public education system, because it's an obvious failure, and replace it with the time-proven success known as the neighborhood school, which would engender neighborhood pride, the active participation of parents and the discipline that's required to learn, because "learning is a discipline?"This, of course, would involve wresting power and control from the public education bureaucracy that it enjoys by virtue of the control it has been given over things that have little to do with good education. And Miller admits as much.
But we can dream, can't we?
4 comments:
Yeah, forcing diversity, even though I am a black individual, was never something I've been a fan of. I see it as this, if it's true that diversification is better than having everyone alike then put it to the true test, don't legislate it. This way if really and truly, diversification is better,thn those companies that diversify will prosper and thrive wheras those who don't will fail. If diversification isn't the best way then... well... I don't really think we should do it.
I for one don't want to get into a program because I'm black, but I want to get into it because my scores and qualifications are just better than yours whether you're white, black, green, or purple.
But Louisville's choice has been great for Mercy, Assumption, Sacred Heart, Collegiate, Presentation, Trinity, St. X and on and on and on.
The diversity movement was a genuine "legal fad" with US District Court judges all over this land taking over the local public school systems and implementing bussing plans. It had a bad outcome here and absolutely horrible outcomes in most other metro areas where it was tried. The absolute devastation of the neighborhood school concept can never be forgiven.
Liberal judges, acting in concert with other liberal judges around the nation, implemented a deliberate social experiment without any serious thought given to the long term ramifications of making children attend school far from home. As another writer said, the plan was the best thing that could have happened for the private schools in this area. But the downward spiral it caused in the Jefferson School District has yet to stop.
How absurd is it that this county has exactly one good high school that everyone wants to get into? If you don't make it into Manual you have to go private to get your kid a good education. It is still unbelievable to me that this was allowed to happen. And those who protested the plan at the time were universally ridiculed in the press as racist rednecks.
Oh well, sorry for the long post. This subject is one of my hot buttons in case you didn't notice.
So I guess those districts that rank lower than Jefferson County are all as uniformly committed to diversity as Jefferson County? And those that are ranked more highly less so?
Also, three Louisville high schools are on Newsweek's 2008 list of the top 1300 schools in the USA.
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