Reply #74: Whether or not you mentioned it, it remains true.

[noamnety]

Students in Detroit are not attending facilities that are the same quality as the facilities in Bloomfield Hills. Bloomfield Hills has had the benefit of generations of higher funding. They have better lab equipment, they have swimming pools, heck, they have electricity. The Detroit kids are not allowed to go to school there.

Whether or not people in wealthier districts will acknowledge it, it IS true that there are inequities that we take for granted as a "normal" problem and somehow less outrageous than the fact that some kids have private transportation and others have to rely on buses or carpools.

It's a function of institutional racism that we are so quick to blame the cause of bad schools on "parents unwilling to advocate for their kids" when we are talking about inner city students. It draws on an ugly stereotype and doesn't reflect the real problems of power, oppression, and economics. Parents can advocate til they are blue in the face in Detroit, but they don't have the right to vote down bond issues in Bloomfield Hills, which is the cause of much of the inequities. And in Detroit, there simply isn't the tax base - again because of decades of racist policies and issues that are too lengthy to address in any meaningful way here.

I am all for people addressing those issues in public schools - but mostly what I see is people spending their time and effort advocating against one of the few working alternatives for these kids, rather than advocating for EQUITABLE funding. The reason is that those in the wealthier districts will not allow their resources to be diverted for the common good. And in the interim between now and when we GET equitable funding - which if the past is any indication will be generations - they offer nothing except preaching that it's immoral for the inner city kids to demand to attend a school that meets their needs best right now. Those would be the kids being left behind.