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As the anti-Vouchers parent of a High School (Class-of-99) graduate . .
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<P>1. After Albert Shanker and the UFT routed all those African American
and Latino parents in Brooklyn (Ocean Hill / Brownsville) thirty years
ago, whatever happened to the notion of community control? Invested
with the powers of a school board, Ocean Hill / Brownsville parents and
their activist allies implemented a transfer of eighteen white teachers
who, they contended, were more interested in preserving their own professional
privileges than in responding to community concerns. Low-income people
of color running their own lives and institutions? Perish that thought!
Anticipating the wisdom of Al Campanis, Daniel Patrick Moynihan felt that
this awful responsibility would simply oppress poor folks "with yet another
burden with which they are not competent to deal."
<P>Dr. Pedro Noguera's essay, "Transforming urban schools by increasing
community control," which includes a reassessment of Ocean Hill / Brownsville,
was published a couple of months ago in In Motion magazine. <A HREF="http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/pncap4.html">Ocean
Hill / Brownsville 1968</A>
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<P>2. An article in yesterday's Houston Chronicle (that I forgot to bookmark)
proudly described the post-Littleton efforts being made by schools there
to improve security. This entails uniforms (of course), a customized
police force, ubiquitous surveillance cameras, and an edict, in one district,
that back-packs and other containers be transparent. It seems not
to have occurred to anyone that educators are now making the same assumptions
about their charges as wardens in high-security prisons make about theirs.
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<P>3. My son's recently concluded career in public schools, in northern
and southern California, proved only that the whole process is a crap shoot.
He had the good fortune to meet teachers who lived up to and surpassed
the highest standards of their profession; and he had the misfortune to
meet teachers who were lazy, self-absorbed and stunningly incompetent.
Vouchers could not have guaranteed him an unbroken supply of good teachers,
nor could they have held him harmless from control freaks and assholes.
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