Maybe the new Anti-Poverty Task Force will come up with a bold plan. But I’m not optimistic.
Concentrated poverty
Posted inNews & Opinion
‘Fix’ the schools? Maybe we’re not up to the job
Every year on the first day of school, I like to walk over to the elementary school a block from our house and watch the children as they arrive. I used to get a little lift – a feeling of freshness and new beginnings as the school year started. All that potential, and all that […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The riots’ aftermath: 50 years and counting
In the early and mid-1960’s, the top news in this country was often African Americans’ struggle for civil rights. Marches and lunch-counter sit-ins; Freedom Rides; Ku Klux Klan violence; FBI spying; protesters branded like cattle in a Mississippi prison; the murders of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and others: that was America 50 years […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Segregation forever
It’s probably not a surprise to you, but here’s some news: Americans have turned our back on school integration. Actually, we turned our back on it a long time ago. This month’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action policies in Michigan is just the latest evidence. Affirmative action has helped innumerable minority students get a […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
A place with no vision
I’m trying to pull myself out of my funk here, but I’m not making much progress. I just hate to see a community like this one waste its potential when it has so much. A couple of things set this off. One is that yet again, there’s a little buzz about government “consolidation.” The governor […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Feedback 1/8
Affordable housing and concentrated poverty I recently retired after spending 25 years trying to develop affordable housing in suburban Monroe County. The nonprofit development corporation for which I worked had a mission to develop one unit in the suburbs of Monroe County for every unit developed in the City of Rochester. This was one small […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Our crisis of poverty, racism, and segregation
This has to be an almost dizzyingly heady time for Lovely Warren. On January 1, she’ll be sworn in as Rochester’s mayor, the first woman to hold that position. Her administrative appointments are getting positive reviews. Last week, she joined other newly elected mayors at the White House for a discussion with President Obama. But […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Ravitch on education’s reign of error
It’s a gross understatement to say that Diane Ravitch is a lightning rod for politicians, teachers, and education reformers. Once a marshal of former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law, she later rejected NCLB and the reform model it energized, saying it was completely wrong. Charter school and education reform advocates […]
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The test score rage: rhetoric versus reform
Well, that gave everybody something to talk about, didn’t it? State education officials released school-district scores on standardized tests last week, and the news was awful. Only 31 percent of the state’s students met or exceeded the “proficiency” standard for math. And only 31.1 percent of them met the English standard. And among the large […]
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Schools, neighborhoods,and the future of the city
Every once in a while, the topic of neighborhood schools comes up in Rochester. And while part of this stems from nostalgia, there’s also a fiscal argument. The Rochester school district spends a lot of money busing children to schools outside of their neighborhood. The reason: the district’s “school choice” system, which lets parents choose […]
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What if we’re chasing the wrong ‘schools’ fix?
One of the more thought-provoking articles I’ve read recently is Jerry Muller’s “Capitalism and Inequality,” in Foreign Affairs. The subject: the United States’ growing income inequality. Liberals and conservatives alike will find plenty to dislike in what Muller says, but some of his points are hard to argue with. We’re spending enormous amounts of money […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
What’s your solution?
In a large urban school district, things are seldom as simple as they seem. That’s the case, in Rochester, with the school drop-out rate. As Tim Macaluso’s article on page 12 relates, the true drop-out rate isn’t nearly as high as many of us have assumed. But that’s not the full story. Each year, hundreds […]
