Wow. What kind of institution comes up with such a solution to distributing limited resources? Two weeks of camping out at the school is almost like a surgical strike at poor people with small children who need to be cared for! How humiliating to have to pretend it is some sort of festival. If this Cincinnati school district can’t bring itself to make the effort to determine who are most at need, then at the least, they should simply have a random drawing.
You know how it is: The poor need to meet a certain quota of ridiculous effort and suffering before they can dare claim to deserve or to have earned anything, lest they get uppity.
If a parent is willing to camp out for 2 weeks to try to get her or his child an educational advantage, then this miracle school is already getting some pretty good raw materials to start with.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
It’s a feature, not a bug. I mean, how many poor kids’ parents can afford to camp out for two weeks? This way they don’t have to say right out why they’re doing it.
If the public ever realizes how and why they have been marginalized and subjected to false austerity so that the already rich zillion-airs can make even MORE money, it will be fire and bloodbaths.
Why? Because the system is completely broken.
[quote=“austintx, post:2, topic:60474, full:true”]
What kind of institution comes up with such a solution to distributing limited resources? [/quote]
It’s the German school. They’re selecting for willingness to obey orders interminably.
Why not have the parents duke it out on the lawn? Quicker than this slo-mo gladiatorial contest, and more entertaining for the ruling classes.
I’ll bring the popcorn.
Amen brother. In my city the poorer areas pay property tax rates 3 or 4 times many of the wealthiest homeowners due to the assessments being 27 years stale. As I filed my tax appeal I told the tax office that they’d be facing torches and pitchforks if people ever figured this out.
All they need to do to make this school entrance fair is run a lottery like the desirable charters here do. Done, no more circus. But clearly certain people like it this way.
On the other hand, it is fun to create a system in which rich people can’t just buy their way to the top, and instead have to sleep in their cars for two weeks. If, that is, they can’t just pay a homeless person to keep their place in line.
Or, you know, decouple local property taxes from school funding schemes so that public schools in poor area aren’t so…poor. Also acknowledge that kids in economicallynchallenged areas need more support, money and flexibility than kids in richer areas.
And force charter schools to make good on the original promise they were sold under, that they would be experimental schools that immediately give back to the communities they serve, share ideas with local public schools and serve as laboratories for sustainable ideas that can inform public schools.
Also stop building an economy so fucking bifurcated and winner-take-all that forces people to do crazy things ij order to make sure their 5 year old doesn’t “fall behind” lest they be lost under the wheels of the great wealth grab forever.
This is what happens when we assume all 5 year old kids are at the same academic level, and fail to provide classes for kids that learn faster, and better options for kids that learn more slowly. The whole concept of grade levels is outmoded. Combine that bureaucratic incompetence, and you get parents sitting in the cold for weeks to get kids education at their level.
I’ll go out on a limb and say kids that have been reading since they are three shouldn’t be in same one-size-fits-all reading class with kids that haven’t ever seen a book or learned the alphabet. They should be in the same school, should play together, but have different educational needs, and shouldn’t be given the same instruction.
Jesus Christ. For a college basketball game? I hope people are getting happily laid, at least.
The district and teacher unions here in Jersey City, taken over by the state 20 years ago and heavily state subsidized, stick their fingers in their ears and go “lalalalalala” when you try to point out to them what the successful charters (including the one my kids attended that has union teachers) are doing right. All they want to do is complain that the charters “are taking their money”. Never mind that the lottery entry school gets it’s kids into the magnet HS at the same rate as the test-in magnet middle schools. The charter’s acceptance rate is worse than Harvard’s, but my local k-8 is run with an iron hand by a septuagenarian who keeps parents who would like to be involved out of HIS school. You can have all the progressive ideas in the world and they won’t do any good to closed minds and entrenched bureaucracies.
I live in Cincinnati, I lived up the street from this school.
The shanty town was always an oddity, it exists basically up the street from University of Cincinnati.
One thing worth noting, that I did not see anywhere else, was that this basically locks you into that school from K - 6. So its not like you’re waiting in line for JUST kindergarten. There is also a policy that makes it easier/simpler to get siblings in, too, so you’re also not going to be waiting in line multiple times per say.
Seems like most of the US public went to “german” schools then.
Abu Ghraib, Haditha, My Lai, Guantanamo: “I just did what I was ordered to”
