Forced to Pick a Major in High School
Forced to Pick a Major in High School.
When I was in high school (just after the Earth cooled) Dwight Morrow was in the next town over. It's in a town that used to be very wealthy and largely white. Sometime around the late 60's to mid 70's integration efforts hit the tipping point and "white flight" began. Now the area is largely minorities with pockets of it's wealthy white residents hither and yon. Dwight Morrow itself looks like a private school. Beautiful campus and granite buildings with green lawns in between. It could pass for a small college.
In my day (I sound like Abe Simpson), the school was rife with racial strife, violence, gangs, drugs and plummeting test scores. The year I graduated high school, the police were called to the school 26 times. One school dance ended with a student stabbed and a near riot.
We played them in soccer and the games were so contentious the police would come to every game. It started my sophmore year when we had a penalty kick. Our best striker was lined up for a kick inside the box. The rest of us waited for a potential rebound to score. Just after our striker approached the ball, a Dwight Morrow player turned and punched our captain in the face while everyone was watching the ball. He went to the ground and, of course, a fight broke out. Our coach saw the incident and stormed onto the field ready to wring the kids neck. As he got closer, the kid produced a knife from his sock. Yes. He brought a knife onto the field during a game.
A few years before this, Dwight Morrow attempted to get a proposal passed that would pool tax revenue from regional towns to create a larger pool that would then be redistributed to each town. It was a cash grab, plain and simple. The residents of my town were wealthy and in some cases, political connected. They squashed that one after a lengthy legal battle.
The next tactic was to use the desegregation argument to force a regionalization of the schools. The State was tiring of the legal battles and the cost so they commissioned a "study" to determine if regionalization was necessary. To the surprise of absolutely no one, they found it was. The study was released before an ad hoc meeting of the PTA that was called on a blustering Friday night before the start of Christmas break. For reasons that I don't remember, I was there with my Dad. There were about 9 people in attendance. I looked at the study and in the executive summary, they noted that for statistical purposes, Whites and Asians were considered one ethnic group and Blacks and Hispanics were considered one group. One precocious young lad (OK, it was me) stepped up to the mic during Q&A and asked the panel of three white guys about how it felt to be Asian and if they experienced and prejudice growing up. One guy smirked as he saw right through me, the other two look bewildered.
I explained that if Whites and Asians were essentially one ethnic group, surely they can relate to what it's like to be Asian. They blew me off. I was just some kid and this was a done deal. They had their answer before they started and worked backward like a mystery writer to find the question.
Yet another lengthy, expensive legal battle was waged and they used the same logic as a 16 year old Me did. Finally, when this thing was going to head to the State Supreme Court and my town headed for a clear, decisive victory, they caved. I later heard from a retired US Senator from NJ that they scuttled the plan to avoid a precedent setting loss that even the left leaning court could not deny. That would set off a wave of litigation statewide where this sort of thing was done routinely in areas that didn't have the resources to fight.
With that plan dead, they then tried to get themselves funded as a "magnet school". That is, one that offered specialized courses that would draw student to the school. That went exactly nowhere. They couldn't find enough students to fill AP classes and they had no takers from nearby towns willing to bus into the school to take them either.
This latest bid is merely rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I applaud them for taking drastic steps and radical measures but I can see no value in the changes they've made. If you asked a 15 year old Me to make a life decision like that, I'd be even worse off than I am now. I could hardly decide when I was in Sophmore year and even then, I ended up changing my major. The changes seem suited to making the school some sort of white collar vocational school rather than a place of liberal arts and humanities type school which is more in line with what High School students need. In your teens you're still trying to figure out who you are, how the world works and where you fit into the whole thing. Asking someone to specialize at that age is insane. They would do better to study the neighboring schools (public and private) and see what they do and why they're doing it better. Then emulate that model. There are too many painful answers to those questions. Tax dollars are significantly different (see here.) but that's not the whole story. My high school sends 98% of its graduates on to 4 year colleges. I don't know what Dwight Morrow sent but it wasn't anywhere near that number. Some of that is certainly economics but much of it is not. Many students who should be kicked out of Dwight Morrow are not. They move them along to push the problem forward just to get them out of there. Many of the parents don't care either. There are certainly good kids and good parents both of whom are interested in a quality education but they're significantly outnumbered by those who don't care and are only there because they have to be.
I Googled for news on this item and found this piece. I can only say that Ms. Williams is either delusional or a fabulist. No parent from my town ever went to any meetings at Dwight Morrow. Not out of any fear or racial animus, rather that there was no reason to. Decisions about our school were made at our school board meetings. The meetings at Dwight were of the "hooray we've won so what do we do next" variety. Not the place you're going to kill this thing. They were firmly in the camp of this plan being a done deal. The descriptor of the parents dressing from head to toe in school colors is laughable. No parent in their right mind would do this at even the most high profile sporting event. These parents were (and are) the most fashion conscious label-whores I've ever known. Further, the idea of one of them embarrassing themselves by taunting someone with a sign calling student "monkeys" is absurd and slanderous. No parent would never dream of calling anyone by a racial slur. Not only because they are, by and large, not bigots but also because they'd be shunned by their chardonnay drinking limosine liberal friends.
What's the answer? I'll always say vouchers. Fund the students, not the schools. Englewood has a very good quality private school that would be well within reach of public school students if they were given vouchers. Delaware has gone to the half assed approach of allowing students to go to any school that has an open position even if they're in a different district. That middling road pleases no one. There are rarely any positions open at AI DuPont or other top schools and with good reason. Charter schools appear to be taking root which is progress but there have been criticism leveled at them from the expected corners. I don't know enough to speculate on that criticism. My only experience is my next door neighbor's kids. The elder child was a straight A student before going to charter school so there wasn't any material difference. The younger one was falling in with a bad crowd in public school and was turning into a brat. His transformation at charter school was nothing short of miraculous. He's now very into sports, and it team captain. His grades are up and the brattiness is gone. He even seems happier now. I don't credit charter schools with all those changes but it certainly plays a part. Next time I ask him, I'll have to see what he thinks.
p.s. I had this thing saved as a draft for while before posting as I haven't had time to finish it.
When I was in high school (just after the Earth cooled) Dwight Morrow was in the next town over. It's in a town that used to be very wealthy and largely white. Sometime around the late 60's to mid 70's integration efforts hit the tipping point and "white flight" began. Now the area is largely minorities with pockets of it's wealthy white residents hither and yon. Dwight Morrow itself looks like a private school. Beautiful campus and granite buildings with green lawns in between. It could pass for a small college.
In my day (I sound like Abe Simpson), the school was rife with racial strife, violence, gangs, drugs and plummeting test scores. The year I graduated high school, the police were called to the school 26 times. One school dance ended with a student stabbed and a near riot.
We played them in soccer and the games were so contentious the police would come to every game. It started my sophmore year when we had a penalty kick. Our best striker was lined up for a kick inside the box. The rest of us waited for a potential rebound to score. Just after our striker approached the ball, a Dwight Morrow player turned and punched our captain in the face while everyone was watching the ball. He went to the ground and, of course, a fight broke out. Our coach saw the incident and stormed onto the field ready to wring the kids neck. As he got closer, the kid produced a knife from his sock. Yes. He brought a knife onto the field during a game.
A few years before this, Dwight Morrow attempted to get a proposal passed that would pool tax revenue from regional towns to create a larger pool that would then be redistributed to each town. It was a cash grab, plain and simple. The residents of my town were wealthy and in some cases, political connected. They squashed that one after a lengthy legal battle.
The next tactic was to use the desegregation argument to force a regionalization of the schools. The State was tiring of the legal battles and the cost so they commissioned a "study" to determine if regionalization was necessary. To the surprise of absolutely no one, they found it was. The study was released before an ad hoc meeting of the PTA that was called on a blustering Friday night before the start of Christmas break. For reasons that I don't remember, I was there with my Dad. There were about 9 people in attendance. I looked at the study and in the executive summary, they noted that for statistical purposes, Whites and Asians were considered one ethnic group and Blacks and Hispanics were considered one group. One precocious young lad (OK, it was me) stepped up to the mic during Q&A and asked the panel of three white guys about how it felt to be Asian and if they experienced and prejudice growing up. One guy smirked as he saw right through me, the other two look bewildered.
I explained that if Whites and Asians were essentially one ethnic group, surely they can relate to what it's like to be Asian. They blew me off. I was just some kid and this was a done deal. They had their answer before they started and worked backward like a mystery writer to find the question.
Yet another lengthy, expensive legal battle was waged and they used the same logic as a 16 year old Me did. Finally, when this thing was going to head to the State Supreme Court and my town headed for a clear, decisive victory, they caved. I later heard from a retired US Senator from NJ that they scuttled the plan to avoid a precedent setting loss that even the left leaning court could not deny. That would set off a wave of litigation statewide where this sort of thing was done routinely in areas that didn't have the resources to fight.
With that plan dead, they then tried to get themselves funded as a "magnet school". That is, one that offered specialized courses that would draw student to the school. That went exactly nowhere. They couldn't find enough students to fill AP classes and they had no takers from nearby towns willing to bus into the school to take them either.
This latest bid is merely rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I applaud them for taking drastic steps and radical measures but I can see no value in the changes they've made. If you asked a 15 year old Me to make a life decision like that, I'd be even worse off than I am now. I could hardly decide when I was in Sophmore year and even then, I ended up changing my major. The changes seem suited to making the school some sort of white collar vocational school rather than a place of liberal arts and humanities type school which is more in line with what High School students need. In your teens you're still trying to figure out who you are, how the world works and where you fit into the whole thing. Asking someone to specialize at that age is insane. They would do better to study the neighboring schools (public and private) and see what they do and why they're doing it better. Then emulate that model. There are too many painful answers to those questions. Tax dollars are significantly different (see here.) but that's not the whole story. My high school sends 98% of its graduates on to 4 year colleges. I don't know what Dwight Morrow sent but it wasn't anywhere near that number. Some of that is certainly economics but much of it is not. Many students who should be kicked out of Dwight Morrow are not. They move them along to push the problem forward just to get them out of there. Many of the parents don't care either. There are certainly good kids and good parents both of whom are interested in a quality education but they're significantly outnumbered by those who don't care and are only there because they have to be.
I Googled for news on this item and found this piece. I can only say that Ms. Williams is either delusional or a fabulist. No parent from my town ever went to any meetings at Dwight Morrow. Not out of any fear or racial animus, rather that there was no reason to. Decisions about our school were made at our school board meetings. The meetings at Dwight were of the "hooray we've won so what do we do next" variety. Not the place you're going to kill this thing. They were firmly in the camp of this plan being a done deal. The descriptor of the parents dressing from head to toe in school colors is laughable. No parent in their right mind would do this at even the most high profile sporting event. These parents were (and are) the most fashion conscious label-whores I've ever known. Further, the idea of one of them embarrassing themselves by taunting someone with a sign calling student "monkeys" is absurd and slanderous. No parent would never dream of calling anyone by a racial slur. Not only because they are, by and large, not bigots but also because they'd be shunned by their chardonnay drinking limosine liberal friends.
What's the answer? I'll always say vouchers. Fund the students, not the schools. Englewood has a very good quality private school that would be well within reach of public school students if they were given vouchers. Delaware has gone to the half assed approach of allowing students to go to any school that has an open position even if they're in a different district. That middling road pleases no one. There are rarely any positions open at AI DuPont or other top schools and with good reason. Charter schools appear to be taking root which is progress but there have been criticism leveled at them from the expected corners. I don't know enough to speculate on that criticism. My only experience is my next door neighbor's kids. The elder child was a straight A student before going to charter school so there wasn't any material difference. The younger one was falling in with a bad crowd in public school and was turning into a brat. His transformation at charter school was nothing short of miraculous. He's now very into sports, and it team captain. His grades are up and the brattiness is gone. He even seems happier now. I don't credit charter schools with all those changes but it certainly plays a part. Next time I ask him, I'll have to see what he thinks.
p.s. I had this thing saved as a draft for while before posting as I haven't had time to finish it.
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