White flight: Are parents running to less successful schools?
Many suburbanites on this blog contend that they would never send their children to city of Atlanta or DeKalb schools and that’s why they now live in Forsyth or Cobb.
Here is an interesting response to that common assertion from a reader who looked at test data that suggests the state’s highest achieving white students are in metro systems, including Atlanta , Decatur, Marietta and DeKalb.
Take a look at this reader’s research:
I have been crunching some numbers from the state DOE report cards and thought I might share with you some interesting results.
In response to the constant attacks on the quality of schooling offered by APS in particular and urban public schools in general, I have often read or heard comments (many by your blog commenters) that they would never consider sending their own children to Atlanta schools and/or that they have moved out of the city to the suburbs rather than do so.
What continues to interest me, particularly when addressing the subject of “white flight” from Atlanta and certain other urban systems, is how little evidentiary basis there is to back up most of these decisions, particularly when made by middle or upper-middle class white parents.
So I decided to try to address the question: “Based on available data, which Georgia school districts provide the best educational results for white students?”
I assumed, for purposes of this exercise, that SAT scores provide the best proxy available for “educational end product.” (For obvious reasons, I decided not to use CRCT scores or graduation rates, which many would contend are highly suspect).
If white flight out of Atlanta schools were to make rational sense, would not one expect that SAT scores for white students in suburban systems would greatly outstrip their Atlanta counterparts who are “left behind” in such a failed system? [Caveat: The state web site makes it impossible to show all individual district subgroup SAT scores at one time, so I have had to go district-by-district and have not looked at every district in the state, but am prepared to do so if you find this topic interesting enough to write about. Also, the DOE website does not provide a breakdown by family income level, so comparisons of scores on that basis cannot be done.]
My preliminary review shows as follows:
In 2008-09 (the most recent data included at the state website), the Georgia system with the highest average SAT scores (math and verbal) for its white students appears to be Decatur City (1203); second is Atlanta City (1165); third is Marietta City (1150); and fourth is DeKalb County (1145).
For 2007-08, the top four appear to have been (1) Atlanta (1174); (2) Decatur (1166); (3) DeKalb (1136); and (4) Fulton County (1108). The statewide SAT average for all white students was 1042 in 2008-09 and 1040 in 2007-08
I know from prior discussions with many white parents (especially those whose children do not attend APS schools) that these results will strike some as unbelievable — that white students in Atlanta, Decatur and DeKalb public schools perform better on SATs than white students in Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, Cherokee, Fayette, Forsyth and possibly (probably?) every other system in the state of Georgia!
Now, this data certainly do not prove that APS, Decatur and DeKalb are doing a “better job” or providing a “better education” to their white students than every other district in the state — far from it. What is equally or more likely is that other critical demographic factors at play (especially parent education and income levels) are more favorable for white students in those districts than in most others.
Similarly, demographic factors (especially high poverty rates) among its black students probably skews the SAT scores for those APS and DeKalb students in the opposite direction.
What the data do suggest, however, is that middle class parents (white or minority) who conclude – based only on a school’s or a system’s overall test scores – that they should buy their houses in another district or send their kids to private schools rather than APS (or DeKalb or Decatur) may only be fooling themselves about the perceived benefits for their own children.
I do believe that there are some gross misconceptions out there about how well or poorly some systems (especially APS) are doing in educating students, and that your column would be a great place to show that at least some of those misconceptions are not supported by any data.
By Maureen Downey, AJC Get Schooled blog
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234 comments Add your comment
Concerned 2
November 20th, 2010
6:32 pm
Sorry about the couple of typos, “very”, “one at an HBCU”, “these” kids, …” Profiteers who put in”. Got too fast with the thoughts, fingers did not keep up. Forgive me, will proof if I return to comment again.
Grady Parent
November 20th, 2010
7:59 pm
@Concerned 2, Careful now. Some might say you are being selfish for leaving those disadvantaged kids behind and how it is more important to have those kids benefitting from your work. Please give me some dap and props on how how asinine this thinking really is. You bring up some good points about it being economic and not so much race.
You said, “Affluent African American parents send their children to Grady or North Atlanta if they can’t afford private schools.” How do they get into Grady? Do you know? I ask because supposedly no out of zone transfers have been accepted for several years now. If we are going to get out of zone kids, I am glad it’s the affluent African American ones.
Dr. Craig Spinks /Augusta
November 20th, 2010
8:09 pm
Jeff, thanks for your comments. You provide a student perspective on Grady. My inquiry about the influence of “thug culture” at Grady arises from my experiences in Augusta-area middle and high schools. There a “thug culture” characterized by widespread indifference to learning, disrespect for one’s self and others, as well as disruption of instructional activities was prevalent. Such a culture, in my view, had to inhibit academic learning, particularly among kids without a strong family to help them resist it. You and your schoolmates at Grady are fortunate to be spared the more destructive aspects of “thug culture.”
Henry W. Grady
November 20th, 2010
8:13 pm
It is most certainly economic as opposed to racial. However, as Ms. Downey’s post points out, the DOE does not provide test score breakdowns by income – it only provides those by race.
Grady Parent
November 20th, 2010
8:34 pm
@Henry W. Grady, Can you check to see if the DOE provides test scores on a scale meauring parental selfishness? The audacity of you to infer white parents are selfish for not raising the kids of the disadvantaged. How do these disadvantaged families contact you? You can feed, clothe and tutor these kids since you are so unselfish. Henry, you are white? Otherwise it wouldn’t count.
David Sims
November 20th, 2010
9:39 pm
@AlreadySheared. Okay then. My own sources don’t resolve SAT scores by race. I have to extrapolate from school in which only one race forms almost the entire student enrollment.
Your own sources indicate, you said, that the white students of Grady High School in Atlanta averaged 20 points higher on the SAT than did the white students of Northview High School in Fulton. Twenty points isn’t an eyebrow-raising difference.
On the other hand, there are Cobb County’s Walton, Lassiter, Pope and Harrison high schools; Fulton County’s Roswell and Milton high schools; and Forsyth County’s South Forsyth High School, ALL of which leave Grady behind in average SAT scores by about 100-200 points—not merely by 20 points—and NONE of which has enough Asian students to be responsible for those higher scores. Surely, then, the white students in those schools are being better taught than the white students in Grady High in Atlanta.
The real surprises for a racist like me are Wheeler in Cobb County, the top five DeKalb high schools (especially Chamblee), and Riverwood and North Springs in Fulton County. There are apparently some smart black students in them. Where black students are being best taught isn’t the subject of the article, but the combination of demographics and SAT scores for those schools did surprise me, so I thought I’d mention it.
However, there is an ugly possibility that probably needs to be ventilated here. Could it be that the reason whites are not so well taught in some of Georgia’s high schools is that doing so would widen the racial gaps and threaten the schools’ chances to make AYP?
TheresaJ
November 20th, 2010
10:37 pm
Maureen, I believe you live ITP, no? I also believe you’ve not ventured out the these OTP areas you so readily criticize. I live in Dunwoody in the NUMBER ONE school district in this city and there are MANY minorities who ALSO attend the schools. Knowing there would be minorities didn’t deter us at all. We hoped to find a home with a backyard (which Decatur generally doesn’t have) and a multi-cultural experience. If you don’t believe me, come out here. Take 285 to Chamblee-Dunwoody and turn left. Keep driving and see for yourself.
Also, to Bill’s point (posted below), I whole-heartedly agree. I know you’ve been doing this almost twenty years, but a LOT has changed in GA, including White flight. Some of us OTP really do RESPECT African-Americans and other minorities. And if I had been the journalist with your quill, I would have certainly factored them into your “statistics”. That, in itself, says a lot about you. Now let’s quit with the White flight business, please. We’ve worked really hard on race relations. Let’s keep going and not create false, poorly created stats to inflame the public.
(Bill’s comment:)
I have to take issue with the notion of “white flight”. This was the case from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. In the 1990’s, things began to change. In the last decade, Atlanta has seen more growth in white residents, and many suburbs have seen more growth in minorities. The notion that the city is black and the suburbs are white is increasingly outdated. We all live in the same metropolitan area, and mostly face the same problems. It is a shame we cannot work together to solve them.
Maureen Downey
November 20th, 2010
10:43 pm
@Theresa. Let me reiterate that the SAT comparison — which is accurate — was done by a reader who kept reading comments from posters about how bad APS and other urban systems were and that they were so happy to have moved to farther counties. So, this reader decided to look at one measure that was not suspect and see how white students fared in the systems that these people were criticizing.
Maureen
APS Parent
November 21st, 2010
12:00 am
No amount of huffing about the quality of Cobb or North Fulton high schools (which I agree perform very well) changes the truth underlying Maureen’s blog post — that SAT scores of white students attending APS schools exceed the SAT sores of white students in all of those schools. This fact cannot be disputed and does not require a degree in rocket science — the numbers are available for all to review at the DOE website.
David Simms claims that the higher overall average SAT scores for all students at those schools somehow prove “that the white students at those schools are being better taught than the white students in Grady High in Atlanta.” Really? The facts — as shown in the DOE’s own numbers — are that the average white student SAT (math plus verbal) score at Grady for the last reported school year was 1161 — higher than the white student averages at every one of the schools listed by David: Walton (1159), Lassiter (1129), Pope (1126), Harrison (1085), Roswell (1146), Milton (1119), and South Forsyth (1099). Moreover, in none of the last three years have the white student average SAT scores at any of those schools ever equaled the average white student scores at Grady.
Anyone should feel free to argue that there are economic and demographic reasons totally unrelated to school quality that account for the fact that white students at Grady High School and in the Atlanta Public Schools outperform white students in every other school system in the state of Georgia (with the exception of Decatur City). As Already Sheared has pointed out, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that doesn’t mean they are entitled to make up their own facts. And the fact that gave rise to Maureen’s blog post is that white students in Decatur, Atlanta and DeKalb County are, on average, the top-performing white students on SATs in the entire state. That may make lots of folks on here unhappy, but it does not make it less of a fact.
B. Killebrew
November 21st, 2010
12:30 am
Great post, Jeff, Henry W. Grady, and APS Parent…
B. Killebrew
November 21st, 2010
12:30 am
Should say “Great posts…”
Roswell Mom
November 21st, 2010
1:00 am
I think this debate is actually pretty fascinating. I have two thoughts on it. First, does anyone know how many white students take the SAT at Walton vs. at Grady? Statistically speaking, it’s far more impressive to have high averages with a larger sample size than it is with lower sample sizes so this may account for some of the difference in the white scores. Second, are any of the schools boosted by magnet programs (that presumably would select students that would tend to do well on the SATs).
Grady Parent
November 21st, 2010
7:38 am
@Roswell Mom, BINGO! You win. Grady does have a communications magnet that has recruited the brightest kids in all Atlanta, black and white. Since these numbers are about the white students, the magnet white students are going to schore very high. At least for now as APS has done is doing away with magnets. This Freshman class is the first to not recruit students city wide.
The only high schools which have entrance requirements are at Carver. They are not called magnets schools but they do select the students based on an auduiton or a minimum CRCT score coming in.
The current SAT scores in one or two of the schools of Carver are actually the highest in all APS.
Inman Mom
November 21st, 2010
7:40 am
I don’t believe there is “White Flight” nor “Black Flight”. A parent is going to want the learning environment most conducive for their child that they can afford.
Are there still students who are able to lie about where they live? I dont think so. When I registered my children for school, I need to provide (2) affidavits regarding my residency, car registration, license registration and an electric bill, all with my name, address, etc. to register my children.
Grady Parent
November 21st, 2010
8:03 am
@Inman Mom, That may be true at Inman. However, Dr. Murray at Grady will register long time friends outside of the Grady zone, friends from APS, kids of high level APS employees. When I drop off my daughter every day we see so many plates from Clayton County and others. Very few have an AKA sorority sticker on a decent car heading downtown to work at the APS palace.
Inman Mom
November 21st, 2010
8:58 am
@GradyParent: Thanks for the clarification. I thought the requirements at Inman was APS wide. It really seems the overcrowding problem is with Dr. Murray, no? Laughing at the “AKA sorority sticker on a decent car heading downtown to work at the APS palace” comment. Dont know what to make of it though. Please enlighten me.
APS Parent
November 21st, 2010
1:23 pm
“BINGO”? Grady Parent? Are you really even going to suggest that the reason for the high test scores at Grady and APS is because Grady has “recruited” away the “brightest kids” from all over the city into the communications magnet? Then how do you account for the fact that the average SAT scores for all white students in APS — not just at Grady — still beat those at all of the other districts in the state except for Decatur? Or that the most recent white student SAT scores at North Atlanta (the only APS high school other than Grady with any significant white enrollment) also top those at all of the great Cobb and North Fulton schools?
And who is recruiting whom? The miniscule number of white out-of-zone transfers into Grady for the magnet is dwarfed by the number of in-town white kids that are “recruited” away from APS by private schools like Westminster, Pace, Lovett, Paideia, Woodward and Galloway — most of which, unlike the public schools, restrict admission to students who can already prove (through testing, interviews and checkbooks) that they are already among the “brightest” students before they are even admitted.
What is amazing is that the white student test scores and achievement, at Grady in particular and APS in general, still blow away the rest of the state, even after all of these “brightest” high-income white students are syphoned off to all those private schools. Can you imagine what the APS white student SAT averages would be for Atlanta if those private students instead attended APS schools, given that the current crop of APS white students (consisting, I gather, only of children of “guilty white liberals”) already leads the state?
Henry W. Grady
November 21st, 2010
3:02 pm
@Roswell Mom, as has already been mentioned in the previous comment by APS Parent, in order to attend a magnet program at an APS school, you must already be zoned in the APS school district, so any students changing schools for this reason would not effect the system-wide average. Furthermore, nearly all of the white students zoned in APS are either zoned for Grady or North Atlanta, so the presence of a magnet school would not provide any statistically significant changes in the school averages for white students. In response to your other question about sample size, this is already addressed in the data that Ms. Downey provides – although this might be true for a one-year period, the fact that the data is consistent over the course of a number of years takes care of any potential concerns about sample size. However, it is important not to lose perspective here – the point is not to nit-pick over a couple points on SAT averages. The point is that, no matter how you look at it, the numbers for white students at in-town schools are nearly identical to those of their peers in the suburbs, a fact that certainly runs contrary to popular opinion.
and @ Inman Mom, I hat to even have to address this here, as it really carries no bearing to the discussion at hand, but the assertions made by Grady Parent about Dr. Murray are completely unfounded, and again, whether they be true or not, have zero bearing on the data in question. The requirements at Inman are the same as they are at every APS school at every level. This certainly does not eliminate people from living out of zone, but that is an issue for another time and place. And again, I hate to address it here, but AKA is a prestigious black sorority… take that as you will, but i’m skeptical that he/she means anything positive by it.
Inman Mom
November 21st, 2010
3:06 pm
@Henry Grady: “@ Inman Mom, I hat to even have to address this here, as it really carries no bearing to the discussion at hand, but the assertions made by Grady Parent about Dr. Murray are completely unfounded, and again, whether they be true or not, have zero bearing on the data in question. The requirements at Inman are the same as they are at every APS school at every level. This certainly does not eliminate people from living out of zone, but that is an issue for another time and place. And again, I hate to address it here, but AKA is a prestigious black sorority… take that as you will, but i’m skeptical that he/she means anything positive by it.”
Who made you the board moderator? Thank you for keeping me on topic…I guess. <>
Grady Parent
November 21st, 2010
6:14 pm
@APS Parent, you are missing the point. Grady does have many smart white kids in zone. The white kids in the communications magnet that are out of zone are also helping the SAT scores, since those are also the brightest kids from the rest of the city.
Just so you know, Decatur has the highest percentage of kids going to private schools in the metro area. I think it is about 10% and APS is second at around 8%. As you say, Grady’s would be higher with those private students, but Decatur’s would be so much higher. Considering there are more white kids in the younger grades and coming from Inman, the scores overall should increase.
Henry W. Grady
November 21st, 2010
6:25 pm
As This is Mrs. Norman Maine said way back at the beginning, “facts do not sway this group.”
Jeff
November 21st, 2010
10:00 pm
I had promised myself that I was done commenting here, but this entire conversation infuriates me. I am saying with all the respect I can muster that many of the commenters on here, in particular Grady Parent, are terribly misinformed. First and foremost, many of the digressions that go on here are irrelevant to the topic at hand, and seem to me to just be attacking APS (I don’t care if my classmates are in zone or out of zone, and it is not because Dr. Murray is just letting his friends send their kids there). Not only that, but you are not reading the valid arguments presented against your point, instead choosing to reiterate your grossly misconceived and oftentimes flat-out wrong comments, which lack factual accuracy. The facts were presented in Ms. Downey’s article (which, although submitted by an anonymous reader, are on the DOE website and are 100% accurate), and they show that white students in Decatur, APS, and Dekalb score higher than white students in any other school district in the state. Those are INDISPUTABLE. Interpret them how you may, but it suggests that no matter what public school you send your child, they will get just about the same test scores. Say what you want about Thug Culture, but I can say as a student at Grady that it affects neither my education nor any other students’. It sickens me to see an insightful article tainted by the countless comments of people either hellbent on taking down the inner-city school systems or trying to justify their own racism, and even moreso when it comes from someone who sends their own child to Grady. I can see that you were offended because you though you were called selfish for caring about your child’s education over less fortunate children’s. But what this article is proving is that it makes NO DIFFERENCE to send your kid to North Atlanta than it does Walton as far as your child’s education goes, so yes, it would be selfish of you to go out of your way to move away from the kids who need your help the most, considering your child gets the same outcome regardless, with no extra effort from you. I think that I can speak for many of the other students in APS in saying that it is appalling for someone that is the parent of an APS student to be so adamantly against the inner-city school systems.
Jeff (Grady Student)
November 21st, 2010
10:12 pm
I had promised myself that I was done commenting here, but this entire conversation infuriates me. I am saying with all the respect that I can muster that many of the commenters on here, in particular Grady Parent, are terribly misinformed. First and foremost, many of the digressions that go on here are irrelevant to the topic at hand, and seem to me to just be attacking APS (I don’t care if my classmates are in zone or out of zone, and it’s definitely not because Dr. Murray is just letting his friends send their kids here). Not only that, but you are not reading the valid arguments presented against your points, instead choosing to reiterate your grossly misconceived and oftentimes flat-out wrong comments, which lack any sort of factual backing. The facts were presented in Ms. Downey’s article (which, although submitted by a reader, are on the DOE website and are 100 percent accurate), and they show that white students in Decatur, APS, and Dekalb score higher on the SAT than white students in any other school district in the state. Those are INDISPUTABLE. Interpret them how you may, but it suggests that no matter what public school you send your child to, they will get just about the same test scores. Say what you want about “thug culture”, but I can say as a student that it affects neither my nor any other students’ education. It sickens me to see an insightful article tainted by the countless comments of people either convinced that public schools are bad because their children do not need them, or people trying to justify their own racism, and even more so when it comes from someone who sends their own child to Grady. I can see that you were offended because you thought you were called selfish for caring about your child’s education over less fortunate children’s. But what this article is proving is that it makes NO DIFFERENCE to send your kid to North Atlanta than it does Walton as far as your child’s education goes. So yes, it would be selfish of you to go out of your way to move away from the kids who need your help the most, considering that your child gets the same outcome regardless, with no extra effort from you. I think that I can speak for a vast majority of the other students in APS in saying that it is appalling for someone that is the parent of an APS student to be so adamantly against the inner-city school systems.
Jeff (Grady Student)
November 21st, 2010
10:34 pm
Oops I thought it did not register. Ignore one of those.
Grady Parent
November 21st, 2010
11:12 pm
@Jeff, How about ignore both of those? Good night. We have school tomorrow early morning. Your writing is quite impressive. Are you sure you really are a student in an APS school?
Va-Hi Family
November 22nd, 2010
2:29 am
I don’t think some people realize how overrun the neighborhoods north of I-20 are with white kids now. Grady and the new high school in Buckhead will almost certainly be majority white within 5 years (no judgement statement there), even with the big private schools pulling from the same neighborhoods. Morningside, Midtown, Virginia Highland, Poncey Highland have more kids under 5 than elementary age. The wave of kids is actually growing.
Local soccer leagues and basketball programs and church preschools are loaded with kids like they haven’t had in decades (ever?). Inman has added multiple sports and activities for kids under Dr Bockman (and where is this dangerous “ghetto” middle school that some say my daughter attends??). They are building a new middle school in Buckhead (after adding essentially 4 new elementary schools in 2009 on the northside).
This wave of kids will flatten out or drop in about 10 years but it will have a lasting effect on the northside of APS.
The impressive kids on my street who attend Grady (and are involved in band, clubs, sports etc and took us to Grady home football games this fall at the renovated stadium) don’t appear to be getting short changed to me. The overcrowding in advanced courses is absurd (and the result of poor planning), but the Grady boundaries will be shrunk to two middle schools and I suspect the classroom and teacher mix will evolve. Of course, if my hunch is not correct in a couple years, we’ll make other plans.
I guess I’m not buying into the “not as bad as it could be stuff.”
Grady Parent
November 22nd, 2010
8:47 am
Va-Hi Family, Good observation on the number of white kids north of I-20. My daughters class has many kids from south of I-20 in Grant Park. Where do you suspect these kids will attend high school after theh redistricting is done? I doubt they will attend their zoned school. My daughters elementary school, Mary Lin, is bursting at the seams. I hear that it will be rezoned also to send kids in to Toomer elementary and possibly Inman Park to Hope. Have you heard this also? That would allow kids that will meet in high school to get to know eachother earlier and the white kids can help the black kids learn, as many posters have said here. I am sure the premise is the same. White kids will test the same regardless of their urban or suburban schools.
Va-Hi Family
November 22nd, 2010
2:17 pm
@Grady Parent,
I seriously doubt APS knows how to deal with the overcrowding or looming overcrowding at MES, Spark, Lin, Inman and Grady. Grady’s may be the easiest to deal with if they narrow it down to just 2 middle schools.
I doubt current Lin kids would be going anywhere else but who knows. The rise is expected to be greater at Spark and MES over the next 5 years if I recall correctly.
What makes the boom more complicated is that the wave won’t continue forever and there will be a drop from the high point (which is still 5 years out) so school capacity needed in 2014 will be higher than 2024. I want to study the demographic report more.
mad_russian
November 22nd, 2010
3:53 pm
Former Springdale Park Elementary Parent,
Once again you are uninformed. Grady doesn’t have the control you think it does. We request teachers when our population reaches a certain level and must depend on APS to provide those educators. It’s not as easy as, “Hey, we need four more teachers, let’s fill the spots.”. Also, it’s difficult to find new teachers in critical needs areas such as science, math, and special education so that compounds with the problems. So chalking it up to the administration at Grady bearing the overall responsibility of making the school larger and hiring teachers is a complete form of ignorance on your part. As I’ve stated, you’ve abandoned public education for your “better” private schools. Private schools have a few advantages, they can choose the students they want, drop the students that aren’t performing well (especially those with special needs), and get rid of behavioral problems with no questions asked. Why not look at the system of education as a whole (nationally) and see where it trickles down to public education and it’s ability to bog down the process. Oh yeah, that would require empathy on your part and unfortunately your elitist views don’t allow for that type of reflection. Come to Grady and see the problems we face just like any other school. Support your local schools to make them better. Stop being an elitist jerk and look at the whole picture. You are yet another product of the manipulation of the popular press to sensationalize the data without truly understanding it.
Grady Parent
November 22nd, 2010
8:19 pm
Va-Hi Family, Some neighbors were talking about that report. The peak increase and then slight decrease is city wide projections. I doubt that will impact school in Buckhead or in the Grady cluster. Let us be real about that. You see the strollers everywhere. Look at the enrollment numbers at many other elementary schools and you might wonder how they stay open. C.W. Hill just closed and merged with Hope. Even Cook, Whitefoord, Burgess, Toomer and Coan middle, that are on the edge of the intown area, are severely under enrolled. There has to be some serious and equitable redistricting to get all intown schools at capacity.
Otherwise, turn Inman into another elementary school, Grady into a middle school and build us a new fifty million dollar high school like in Buckhead.
Kevin
November 23rd, 2010
1:13 am
“The fact that you would put Morehouse College and Morris Brown College in the same sentence is utterly ridiculous.”
@Kevin, again, someone making broad statements about schools in which they know very little about.
@RJ, I went to Morehouse and am very familiar with the history of the AUC institutions. You are definitely talking about the glory days of the 60’s when it comes to Morris Brown. I won’t belabor the financial issues and accreditation issues of Morris Brown, but i’m sure that you are aware that Morehouse and Spelman come to mind first when it comes to academic reputation.
Another Inman Parent
November 23rd, 2010
10:00 pm
“where is this dangerous ‘ghetto’ middle school that some say my daughter attends? [referring to Inman]”
The concerns about safety that some have referred to as a reason for flight to the suburbs may be overblown, but there may also be some truth there. This year, for example, Inman refuses to let walkers leave until the buses are completely loaded. I’m told that this is because there was a fight at dismissal time last year. As a result, walkers spend 15-20 minutes each afternoon after school sitting in classrooms doing nothing.
So, either (1) the school places no value on students’ time, or (2) the school – rightly or wrongly – views the risk of repeat violence as so high that it believes the risk ustifies a policy that takes more than hour of time from each of these students each week – about 40 hours in a year for each student – time that could be spent on schoolwork, on extracurricular activities, on time with family, on sleep that middle school students are so often short on.
And that’s just one example of “high security institution” policies that Inman enforces that I doubt you’d find in many suburban schools and most private schools. Not all students thrive in such surroundings.
Maybe such policies are unnecessary, but apparently the educators at Inman itself feel otherwise.
And for us, Grady is still to come..
Race matters...
November 24th, 2010
2:00 pm
Have you noticed that any race related topic results in huge hits on this blog? Because race matters, the achievement gap will never close in the state of Georgia; therefore, this state’s educational rank will NEVER rise. GET USE to 48th, 49th and 50th.
another comment
November 25th, 2010
4:21 pm
Someone asked about Campbell in Cobb earlier. Yes the area includes Vinings and is predominately White, but then you get to the Middle School and the High School and it is all over. You have entered the Ghetto, especially in Middle School. It is 90% Free Lunch. The High School is the the IB school for Cobb County and it is still over 50% Free Lunch. The problem is the Luxury Apartments that were built in Vinings and around Cumberland Mall in the 70’s as Adult communities for recent college graduates and new comers to Atlanta. They were great place to live and plentyfull. Then in the late 80’s someone sued and said they had to allow Children to live in them. Over the years, they have turned into slum housing of Section 8, waiting for Wieland or the next developer to buy them out to build luxury town houses. Unfortunately only a couple got bought out, so we are stuck with run down 40 year old ghetto’s in Vinnings and Smyrna occuppied by those with Section 8 vouchers, or illegal’s. Campbell High School is 40% Black, 40% Hispanic, and 20% White and Asian and everything else. Who graduates, mostly White and Asian. It has 2,200 students so it ends up being Class 5 A for sports. The Hispanics don’t participate, it should really be a 3 or 4 A for Sports we loose at virtually all sports it is do sad.
At the Freshman Formal they played Ghetto Rap Music. Disgusting. I complained to the principal, it fell on deaf ears. I complain too much.
only 11 out of 150 Cheerleading Students paid booster club dues, of $60. But those who didn’t pay wanted a big Christmas party and big trophy’s. Finally they refunded those of us who paid. Those that didn’t pay, have no problem with fake nails, hair weaves, and hot cheatos.
My house is for sale, I will loose several hundred thousand dollars but my children can not go to school in the Cobb County Ghetto.