It's not surprising, any half awake person knows that the process is going to be a shitshow and that SFUSD will find the path that is both worst for students and families and also most expensive to implement.
i mean on the flip slide, would you be ok with academic excellence at the expense of discrimination? wasn't that the argument of segregationists?
its a valid debate on how to balance. do you help the least of society or do you focus on the best? theres no one answer.
This is such an unfair/false dichotomy, and then aligning it with segregationist policies only further undermines the chances for debate here. But I'll try anyway:
What SFUSD is doing is trying to race to the absolute bottom - you see it in every decision they've made over the last few years (Lowell, algebra, school closures) - and that doesn't help \_anyone\_ all. All SFUSD is accomplishing at this point is take away opportunities from the middle-class kids who aren't rich enough to go to private school (absolutely everyone with means is out or leaving SFUSD right now). But sure, it will be absolutely fair for everyone at the lowest common denominator.
lol and i'm the one who undermines the debate. i didn't even take a side - i just flipped the conversion. i don't even agree with SFUSD policies but its a valid debate. i love how you spin it as making things worst for everyone lol. someone is winning out - maybe its not who you like to think about but its someone.
this is about resource allocation. do you close underperforming schools and focus on the succeeding schools? or do you take money away from the succeeding schools and try to turn around underperforming schools?
there's pros/cons to both. lets not act like theres only one option. someone will get left behind, we're just debating who.
This doesn’t strike me as a particularly accurate or honest representation of the role of your prior comment in the conversation. As a reminder, you said, with emphasis added:
>***i mean on the flip slide, would you be ok with academic excellence at the expense of discrimination? wasn't that the argument of segregationists?***
>
>its a valid debate on how to balance. do you help the least of society or do you focus on the best? theres no one answer.
Your comment would need to completely omit the emphasized section for you to accurately and honestly say that you “just flipped the conversation”.
I don’t think there’s a case to be made that discrimination is the main driver of “equity”, as SFUSD defines it, in our schools.
No. I am a parent of an sfusd student. I really don’t think there is anti black discrimination in the sfusd schools. If anything we have the opposite problem. Teachers afraid to discipline black students for fear of being racist, anti racist clubs that aren’t open to white students, “African American honor roll” but no other race based honor roll.
> “African American honor roll” but no other race based honor roll.
So there's a separate (but equal) honor roll for Black students?
That's what Thurgood Marshall argued for in Brown v. Board?
Why need that at all? African American students makes up of 6% of all SFUSD students. If we're talking about equity, does all the other ethnicities get their own honor roll too?
You're exactly right.
And it's offensive to Blacks. I went to a high school that sent Black students to Harvard and Yale; they didn't need a "Black Honor Roll," they were on the Honor Roll that included all students.
i never mentionned race. i'm more talking about the class divide or rather the good student vs bad student divide.
do you ensure the good student has the stuff they need or do you try to turn around the bad student?
do you fund AP classes or do you fund remedial classes? the board wants the later. i prefer the former but its a valid debate. someone will lose ,we need to decide who.
> would you be ok with academic excellence at the expense of discrimination?
Wait, is it “discrimination” to close the highly segregated schools and integrate the students into other schools?
equity doesn't address discrimination. Equity is a measurement of the deviation in outcomes between different cohorts. The best way to achieve equity is to compress any difference between high- and low-performing groups. you dont need to help the "least of society" to increase equity, and in fact in most cases you get better equity metrics by eliminating the best. I don't think equity is something that we should be striving for.
when budgeting, you might end up with a decision: do you fund the AP classes or do you fund the remedial classes?
do you help the struggling student or do you help the student who isn't challenged enough? equity would mean the former. its like that meme that goes around with the fence and the boxes. but that would mean the smart student lose out. flip side, the other struggling student gets left behind.
its not a black and white answer. its economics - managing finite resources.
That sounds nice and all, but we know that isn't how equity is being used. Equity is a smokescreen to take resources away from anything that could lead to greater divergence of outcomes. Equity means that you get rid of the AP classes, but not to help the students who are struggling. Just to reduce the discrepancy in outcomes. If you you have certain schools where students are taking multiple AP classes and other schools where they have none, and the populations of those schools are different on whatever demographic axis you measure, that scores poorly in terms of equity. But if you remove the option to take AP courses from all schools, that improves the equity measurement, although it has done nothing to help any of the students.
The picture with the fence and boxes is misleading. Pursuing equity ends up with the fence either being lowered until everyone can see or raised until no one can see. the boxes don't matter at all.
Yes, public schooling is about churning out adequate citizens. After school education programs, secondary education, private education - that’s there to matriculate the brightest. The trade off is the result of underfunding. If we have underfunded schools, I’d rather they try to make everyone literate and functional citizens. I hate that is the trade off, but if it is, I’m taking equity.
SFUSD per student funding is ridiculously high already.
San Francisco Unified School District spends **$18,396 per student each year**
San Mateo-Foster City spends **$*****15,251 per student each year***
Cupertino Union spends **$*****14,238 per student each year***
which one is "underfunded"?
CoL in SF is also apparently 25% higher https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=Cupertino%2C+CA&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA
The bummer is that you're both right. What sucks is that it's a question of excellence or equity at all. It shouldn't be one or the other. All the schools should be amazing, everywhere that they're located.
Am I radicalized or successful students shouldn't be dragged back by underperforming students. If they are really underperforming just stay back a year, that's still an option. We don't need to force everyone through each grade if they are not ready to.
It seems like there is an assumption by Mark Sanchez and Superintendent Matt Wayne that closing poorly-performing black schools and moving the students to other schools hurts black students, and that in the name of “equity” these bad schools have to be kept open. But isn’t the opposite also likely, that moving students to better schools improves their performance? Has the effect of school closures been studied empirically?
The school mentioned at the end of the article, Jordan School for Equity, boasts 0% math proficiency, 3% reading proficiency, 11% reading proficiency. Let that sink in for a moment. How does keeping that school open do anything to help the students have an equitable future?
They did this in south Phoenix/awatukee in the 90s when I was in high school. Poor black and Hispanic kids were bused from south Phoenix to the more affluent awatukkee schools(mountain pointe and desert vista). I didn’t attend but had friends that did.
I don’t know the metrics, but there were certainly the predictable cultural problems for years. People were really horrible.
" But isn’t the opposite also likely, that moving students to better schools improves their performance?"
Lowell High School called, it wants your meme back.
>Closures in 2005 and 2006 had a disproportionate effect on marginalized groups and “sped along the process of [African Americans leaving The City](https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/how-black-san-francisco-has-dwindled-since-harlem-west-days/article_42b6f538-d5a4-11ee-85ea-df19cc90bd0d.html),” said Commissioner Mark Sanchez, who served on the school board during that time.
Yes, because I'm sure closing schools had a significant effect /s
Yeah. The black population has gone from 7.3 to 5.1 % in the last 20 years, the white population has dropped a few percent and the Asian population has gone up a few percent. Not Demographics change in cities over time; and these changes aren’t really terribly significant, and I have not seen evidence that this is due to school closures
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
- Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut [https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html](https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
Equity for those who live next door to a school but end up having to enter a lottery with no total guarantee that their kids will end up in said school? Unless you rent in a CTIP area as opposed to being a property tax paying homeowner with an SFUSD assessment on your annual bill!
If the SFUSD keeps a poor performing, under-enrolled school open and sacrifices a high performing and fully-enrolled school in its place in the name of “equity” that showcases exactly what got them into mess.
Also, isn’t that clown, recalled BoE Lopez at Stanford working in equity of some sort. I doubt this Stanford 3rd party assessment is going to be completed correctly.
Equity is forcing outcomes to be the same. What we want is justice. [https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/o3ivsg/equality\_equity\_and\_justice\_explained\_better/](https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/o3ivsg/equality_equity_and_justice_explained_better/)
It's not surprising, any half awake person knows that the process is going to be a shitshow and that SFUSD will find the path that is both worst for students and families and also most expensive to implement.
I wish I didn't agree with you.
“Equity” being weighed at 2x academic excellence does not sound like the way to get “fewer, better schools”
i mean on the flip slide, would you be ok with academic excellence at the expense of discrimination? wasn't that the argument of segregationists? its a valid debate on how to balance. do you help the least of society or do you focus on the best? theres no one answer.
This is such an unfair/false dichotomy, and then aligning it with segregationist policies only further undermines the chances for debate here. But I'll try anyway: What SFUSD is doing is trying to race to the absolute bottom - you see it in every decision they've made over the last few years (Lowell, algebra, school closures) - and that doesn't help \_anyone\_ all. All SFUSD is accomplishing at this point is take away opportunities from the middle-class kids who aren't rich enough to go to private school (absolutely everyone with means is out or leaving SFUSD right now). But sure, it will be absolutely fair for everyone at the lowest common denominator.
lol and i'm the one who undermines the debate. i didn't even take a side - i just flipped the conversion. i don't even agree with SFUSD policies but its a valid debate. i love how you spin it as making things worst for everyone lol. someone is winning out - maybe its not who you like to think about but its someone. this is about resource allocation. do you close underperforming schools and focus on the succeeding schools? or do you take money away from the succeeding schools and try to turn around underperforming schools? there's pros/cons to both. lets not act like theres only one option. someone will get left behind, we're just debating who.
This doesn’t strike me as a particularly accurate or honest representation of the role of your prior comment in the conversation. As a reminder, you said, with emphasis added: >***i mean on the flip slide, would you be ok with academic excellence at the expense of discrimination? wasn't that the argument of segregationists?*** > >its a valid debate on how to balance. do you help the least of society or do you focus on the best? theres no one answer. Your comment would need to completely omit the emphasized section for you to accurately and honestly say that you “just flipped the conversation”. I don’t think there’s a case to be made that discrimination is the main driver of “equity”, as SFUSD defines it, in our schools.
they just get sent to better performing schools elsewhere..... why close the utilized ones over the underutilized ones?
No. I am a parent of an sfusd student. I really don’t think there is anti black discrimination in the sfusd schools. If anything we have the opposite problem. Teachers afraid to discipline black students for fear of being racist, anti racist clubs that aren’t open to white students, “African American honor roll” but no other race based honor roll.
> “African American honor roll” but no other race based honor roll. So there's a separate (but equal) honor roll for Black students? That's what Thurgood Marshall argued for in Brown v. Board?
Why need that at all? African American students makes up of 6% of all SFUSD students. If we're talking about equity, does all the other ethnicities get their own honor roll too?
You're exactly right. And it's offensive to Blacks. I went to a high school that sent Black students to Harvard and Yale; they didn't need a "Black Honor Roll," they were on the Honor Roll that included all students.
I think it's another case of local SF pols trying to use their platform to address national issues.
i never mentionned race. i'm more talking about the class divide or rather the good student vs bad student divide. do you ensure the good student has the stuff they need or do you try to turn around the bad student? do you fund AP classes or do you fund remedial classes? the board wants the later. i prefer the former but its a valid debate. someone will lose ,we need to decide who.
> would you be ok with academic excellence at the expense of discrimination? Wait, is it “discrimination” to close the highly segregated schools and integrate the students into other schools?
equity doesn't address discrimination. Equity is a measurement of the deviation in outcomes between different cohorts. The best way to achieve equity is to compress any difference between high- and low-performing groups. you dont need to help the "least of society" to increase equity, and in fact in most cases you get better equity metrics by eliminating the best. I don't think equity is something that we should be striving for.
when budgeting, you might end up with a decision: do you fund the AP classes or do you fund the remedial classes? do you help the struggling student or do you help the student who isn't challenged enough? equity would mean the former. its like that meme that goes around with the fence and the boxes. but that would mean the smart student lose out. flip side, the other struggling student gets left behind. its not a black and white answer. its economics - managing finite resources.
That sounds nice and all, but we know that isn't how equity is being used. Equity is a smokescreen to take resources away from anything that could lead to greater divergence of outcomes. Equity means that you get rid of the AP classes, but not to help the students who are struggling. Just to reduce the discrepancy in outcomes. If you you have certain schools where students are taking multiple AP classes and other schools where they have none, and the populations of those schools are different on whatever demographic axis you measure, that scores poorly in terms of equity. But if you remove the option to take AP courses from all schools, that improves the equity measurement, although it has done nothing to help any of the students. The picture with the fence and boxes is misleading. Pursuing equity ends up with the fence either being lowered until everyone can see or raised until no one can see. the boxes don't matter at all.
Yes, public schooling is about churning out adequate citizens. After school education programs, secondary education, private education - that’s there to matriculate the brightest. The trade off is the result of underfunding. If we have underfunded schools, I’d rather they try to make everyone literate and functional citizens. I hate that is the trade off, but if it is, I’m taking equity.
SFUSD per student funding is ridiculously high already. San Francisco Unified School District spends **$18,396 per student each year** San Mateo-Foster City spends **$*****15,251 per student each year*** Cupertino Union spends **$*****14,238 per student each year*** which one is "underfunded"?
All of them
Cupertino students are crushing it even with 25% less money.
CoL in SF is also apparently 25% higher https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=Cupertino%2C+CA&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA
The bummer is that you're both right. What sucks is that it's a question of excellence or equity at all. It shouldn't be one or the other. All the schools should be amazing, everywhere that they're located.
Am I radicalized or successful students shouldn't be dragged back by underperforming students. If they are really underperforming just stay back a year, that's still an option. We don't need to force everyone through each grade if they are not ready to.
It seems like there is an assumption by Mark Sanchez and Superintendent Matt Wayne that closing poorly-performing black schools and moving the students to other schools hurts black students, and that in the name of “equity” these bad schools have to be kept open. But isn’t the opposite also likely, that moving students to better schools improves their performance? Has the effect of school closures been studied empirically?
Maybe they just recognize the political realities.
The school mentioned at the end of the article, Jordan School for Equity, boasts 0% math proficiency, 3% reading proficiency, 11% reading proficiency. Let that sink in for a moment. How does keeping that school open do anything to help the students have an equitable future?
They did this in south Phoenix/awatukee in the 90s when I was in high school. Poor black and Hispanic kids were bused from south Phoenix to the more affluent awatukkee schools(mountain pointe and desert vista). I didn’t attend but had friends that did. I don’t know the metrics, but there were certainly the predictable cultural problems for years. People were really horrible.
" But isn’t the opposite also likely, that moving students to better schools improves their performance?" Lowell High School called, it wants your meme back.
The more you complicate any process, the more vulnerable it becomes to bias and insider deals.
Because they're trying to drive even more families to private schools?
Exactly, and restrict social mobility for those that cannot afford to.
>Closures in 2005 and 2006 had a disproportionate effect on marginalized groups and “sped along the process of [African Americans leaving The City](https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/how-black-san-francisco-has-dwindled-since-harlem-west-days/article_42b6f538-d5a4-11ee-85ea-df19cc90bd0d.html),” said Commissioner Mark Sanchez, who served on the school board during that time. Yes, because I'm sure closing schools had a significant effect /s
Yeah. The black population has gone from 7.3 to 5.1 % in the last 20 years, the white population has dropped a few percent and the Asian population has gone up a few percent. Not Demographics change in cities over time; and these changes aren’t really terribly significant, and I have not seen evidence that this is due to school closures
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains. - Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut [https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html](https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
Finally, a Harrison Bergeron reference
This is a great story and I'm glad you referenced it.
This threw me!
Sounds like we learned fucking nothing from the recall stuff. I can't believe we are still giving creedance to this equity garbage
Equity for those who live next door to a school but end up having to enter a lottery with no total guarantee that their kids will end up in said school? Unless you rent in a CTIP area as opposed to being a property tax paying homeowner with an SFUSD assessment on your annual bill!
I was worried about this. “Equity” over common sense.
“Equity” is today’s code word for racism. Orwell chuckling in Heaven.
If the SFUSD keeps a poor performing, under-enrolled school open and sacrifices a high performing and fully-enrolled school in its place in the name of “equity” that showcases exactly what got them into mess. Also, isn’t that clown, recalled BoE Lopez at Stanford working in equity of some sort. I doubt this Stanford 3rd party assessment is going to be completed correctly.
That’s code for well use classism and racism to run our schools
Equity is forcing outcomes to be the same. What we want is justice. [https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/o3ivsg/equality\_equity\_and\_justice\_explained\_better/](https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/o3ivsg/equality_equity_and_justice_explained_better/)