the children (of the wealthy districts) are our future

Picked up from my flist and also rage_free:

Woman Gets Jail Time in School Residency Case

Short version: she established residency for her kids with her father so they could go to a better school. She's doing jail time, has huge fines, and she's currently a teaching assistant actively working toward a teaching license and a felony strips her of both.

[Note: it has been reported the judge is writing a letter on the woman's behalf to recommend she keep her license and still be able to get her teacher's license. Not that a moment of not-quite-as horrible is an improvement, but at least there's a chance she won't lose her future employment opportunities while carrying around a fucking felony conviction.]

So this is where the defense goes, "I know it's wrong, but..." but seriously, even starting with that I'm already tuning this shit out. She did absolutely nothing wrong; those policies are evil.

Public school funding is based on and adheres to some of the least subtle and most defended racism and classism based economic policies that pretend they're about education and are actually about assuring that Black, Hispanic, and lower class children, of which many are those horrific single mothers who are destroying America, get an unequal education that makes it difficult to impossible to get out of poverty; I mean, that's the entire point of its existence. When people talk about how it just needs reform but aren't based on outright racism and classism, really? Really? Like what, Jim Crow laws just needed fine-tuning but weren't exclusionary by the very nature of their existence?

The system isn't broken; this is exactly how it's supposed to function, okay? It's doing a wonderful job. There is no bootstrap shit; kids shouldn't have to fucking bootstrap, period.

Comments

[roguewords]

I worked in one of those school districts. the ones where they only get so much money, and the kids have to be in school the first few weeks because that's how they get the money in the first place, but after that, well, as long as they show up for the standardized tests, we're pretty happy.

And I worked with teh little babies would loved coming to school, but you could see by the time they got the third grade, THIRD GRADE, most of them were already jaded about the whole process. Much less when they got to middle school, or high school.


Two years was more than enough for me. My mom is still working there. She has been for almost ten years. Which really isn't a lot of time, but she's fifth in line in seniority now. They can't keep teachers. They can't keep principals! I just...it drives me crazy. the kids want to learn. but they get burned out by all the stupid tests to get the money. god damned No Child Left Behind.

It's actually Every Child Left Behind.