What is your experience with the Ca criminal justice system exactly? Am I to trust your experience over mine – what is that experience?

As far as students of color not being expected…

Well, once upon a time at OUSD black students were expected to do better and did so. Are you claiming urban schools such as OUSD expects black students to do well? And what do they do when black students engage in problematic behaviors (at a rate higher than Asians for example)?

Black students are what they are. The issue I see is the low expectations some people have of them and the refusal to enforce standards. As far as IQ and academic performance, we have a ton of stats collected by this Brave New World. It is what it is. Now what are we to do about placement of black students into society? Force them all to take college prep until half drop out and the rest tune out?

You do no one any favors by refusing to deal with reality before reality deals with you and yours.

Perhaps you would celebrate further efforts to increase high school graduation requirements. I suppose you’d champion efforts to raise minimum wage to $15. While you are at it, let’s increase the requirements for all the state occupational licenses.

Because after all, you believe all people are created equal, so doing all these things isn’t discriminatory.

Good luck with that.

Your racism silliness is just a fig leaf for your damaging the black students and leaving them with nothing in the Brave New World. That’s how I see it. Your (Liberal) plolicy requires a belief that black students – or any other group such as the Mexicans – can be forced to behave as if they were white (with enought money being spent and rules passed).

Save us from white liberals.

I would be honored to officially sign on as refusing to engage in “its racist rants.”

Nextset’s quotes:

“While it would be wonderful I suppose if the minority youth woke up one morning and stopped performing as minority youth …

All you have to do … is move in some Jewish and Asian kids and get the black and brown kids to not show up for a few tests. Bingo, you have a miracle of Gap Narrowing! Or maybe you just change the classification of all the Carly Simons, Carol Channings, and the rest of the hybrid students to “black”.

So I’m not amused by the constant attempts to say any given school has found the secret to making authentic black kids test white.

There is reason to believe and many psychometricians do believe the “Gap” is as much biological as anything else, nature rather than nurture.

I suppose you want the black (group) scores to test out as something other than black. Good luck with that.

Gouging “the rich” so we can continue to feed/clothe/house and medically treat drug addicts, mental defectives and criminals and their rapidly reproducing broods is just going to hasten Civil War II.

Severe Corporal Punishment especially for juveniles and recividist adults, no mail or visitors in prison except by rare invitation of the warden, and lots of hard labor with rationed and metered education. Think of it as Delancey Street with a whipping post.”

do i agree about black and brown being overrepresented in the prison population solely because of their misdeeds? i’m not as quick to fall in line with you on that one. there is, unfortunately, a difference in how people with more melanin are treated by police and we are doing ourselves and our youth a disservice if we are not honest about that, as well. this is not to say there is no personal responsibility to be held by many of the people in prison; it is simply that there are clear differences about how the justice system treats people of color when it comes to punishment. what gets me a slap on the wrist can get a darker person years behind bars, and that is disconcerting.

trish- i’m unclear as to how nextset’s addressing the racism of low expectations is racist. can you elaborate on what upset you so much in post 16? heck, it’s basically a spin on the only darn thing i ever agreed with dubya on: “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.

It’s Okay for a self professed Communist to rant that black folks in prison are victims – but not okay for anyone including me to argue they are not.

And furthermore you can’t handle an arguement that blacks are victims of a school system – at least the one in the CA Urban Areas of Oakland and maybe LA – that sets them up by mis-education to be unable to cope in the Brave New World, while 3rd world immigrants in the same schools have better outcomes.

Maybe the immigrants aren’t taught they are victims. They are winning just be being here, learning English and moving on to higher education, industry & military.

Tell me Trish, are you black? I am. I don’t see things the way you do. Can you handle that?

This is an education blog – we debate policy. Do you want debate limited to one side that you agree with personally? Please tell us the limits and parameters of your debate notions. I really wish to know.

OUSD has some of the worst outcomes for black students in the country and that was once not the way things were. OUSD’s results for black students have become much worse in my lifetime. And I don’t think it’s the buildings that are responsible. I took classes at Oakland Tech during summer school. The building and it’s equipment were more lavish & expensive than my regular high school.

So what do you think is going so wrong now? Or maybe nothing?

Too bad about the budget and these layoffs, but look at the numbers and the stats for the black students in the last year or two. How much worse can they get, anyway.

The only racism I see is the racism of low expectations, starting in the public schools and continuing to the criminal system. What needs to be done is to get rid of the soft on crime legislature, judiciary and executive branch occupants and re-write our state criminal justice system with a strong nod to what works in Singapore, Malaysia and similar Asian systems: Severe Corporal Punishment especially for juveniles and recividist adults, no mail or visitors in prison except by rare invitation of the warden, and lots of hard labor with rationed and metered education. Think of it as Delancey Street with a whipping post.

As far as your Communist garbage – what makes you think a philosophy that failed everywhere can succeed here, even if we tolerated it? And how do you reconcile it with our Constitution which limits (federal) government power?

I am a parent of an Oakland Public school student. I have lived in Oakland for almost 15 years. I have seen the teachers strike before and I know the support they can receive from the much of the population here. I also now the treachery of the union leaders and their Democratic Party “friends”. For the teachers to win they need to ditch the misleaders and phony friends and appeal directly to the ranks of the other unions. All working people are under attack and we all want quality education for our children. The history of our struggles show that we can win!

and as far as ms. j’s thoughts- my husband, a non-educator, makes the same pleas for me because he is trying to defend my dignity. however, i feel the same as you, and it harks back to my first paragraph: it is not fair to make our students anymore the victim of this adult-based nonsense than they are already going to be. it presents a real problem for me; my desire to leave my kids out of this means i will go set up regardless of getting paid, because that’s what teachers do for their kids. at the same time, i think it’s the selflessness of many teachers that leads to us being treated like non-entities because we can just be guilted into “doing it for the kids”. it makes it so difficult to take a stand and make the point in the manner your husband suggested because while that seems to be the only way we can get through the heads of people who control our pay, it is beyond unfair for our students.

more than anything, i am supremely disappointed in our state legislature for thinking they must control this decision rather than letting it be made by the people who pay the taxes. it is a crime against democracy and deserves far more outrage than it seems to be getting.

http://ousd.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=139492&GUID=4225D9BF-8412-4B84-929C-05E8A13B7BF0&Options=info|&Search=

It’s worth viewing both the video & Powerpoint and a good lead-up to the Budget meeting…