Suggested Answers to the Fourth Short Quiz

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Our next meeting will be Wed evening June 3 at our traditional time of 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm MDT.

We anticipate that participation will be solely on-line via Zoom (the Salt Lake Library, our host for 14.5 years, has cancelled all meeting reservations through Aug 31).

If you RSVP, there is nothing further you need to do such as any special training. We will send all RSVP’s a few days in advance a URL and meeting name/password.

[4/10/2020 update]
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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Answers to the Fourth Short Quiz

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Suggested Answers to the Fourth Short Quiz -- Free College Tuition & K-12 Apartheid Schooling

Question 1

Can free tuition for public colleges and vocational schools atone for America’s “Apartheid” (Jonathan Kozol’s term) K-12 Schooling and what it has produced – a Permanent 30% Under-Caste that, for the last half century, the U.S. Government has continually reported is illiterate as defined by the ability to read the warning label on a can of rat poison?

Answer 1

It is respectfully suggested that you read the following Q&A’s before formulating an answer.

Question 2

As a preliminary matter, can public colleges take race into account in their admissions policies in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Fisher vs. University of Texas (2016)?

Answer 2

Only in a very-limited fashion called “strict scrutiny.” The U.S. Supreme Court approved the following admissions policy --

Under Texas state law, the University of Texas at Austin (the main campus) automatically accepted Texas high school students who ranked in the top 10%* of their class regardless of any other factor, which filled 81%* of the entering freshman class. Other applicants were admitted on the basis of other factors such as leadership qualities, family circumstances, and race.

[* For 2010 et seq., which was after the year involved in the lawsuit, Texas state law was amended to limit automatic admissions to the top 7% of a high school class with a cap of no more than 75% of the entering class filled with automatic admissions.]

Question 3

However, doesn’t the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Parents vs. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007) which effectively put America’s “stamp of approval” on K-12 “Apartheid” (Jonathan Kozol’s term) K-12 Schooling – effectively guarantee abysmal graduation rates at America’s inner-city high schools and woeful academic preparedness for their few graduates?

Answer 3

Absolutely!!!

Question 4

Did the 178 “I Have A Dream”® Programs in 51 American cities in the 1990’s typically produce 90% high school graduation - college matriculation rates despite SINGLE DIGIT high school graduation rates for the class just ahead, and the class just behind, the Dreamer class?

Answer 4

Yes.

Question 5

Was the first (of many) important elements of this success record the enclosure of an entire third-grade class of an inner-city elementary school (or third-grade cohort in a public-housing project) in a protective “cocoon” in which education was revered rather than derogated?

Answer 5

Yes.

IHAD required inclusion of EVERY member of a third-grade class of an inner-city elementary school (or an entire third-grade cohort in a public-housing project) – NO EXCEPTIONS.

Accordingly, the tutor and mentor for each Dreamer and the Dreamer’s only classmates being other Dreamers (together with professional IHAD staff and Dreamer events such as field trips) formed a protective “cocoon” with a RADICALLY-DIFFERENT ATMOSPHERE than the generally-prevailing atmosphere.

Question 6

Was the second (of many) important elements of this success record the fact that the tutor and mentor of each Dreamer from third grade through high school graduation typically became surrogate parents who expressed “early and often” to their Dreamer that s/he could make something of her/him-self with the IHAD program and IT WOULD BREAK THE HEART OF THE TUTOR/MENTOR IF THE DREAMER DIDN’T?

Answer 6

Absolutely!!!

BTW, this is what produced the 90% success rate in the later programs when we focused on the fact that 90% of the male Dreamers in the early programs were graduating from high school and proceeding to college – but half of the female Dreamers were becoming pregnant.

Surrogate parents expressing their hopes and dreams for the female Dreamers got the success rate of the female Dreamers to the 90% level.

Question 7

Would the guarantee of college tuition given to each Dreamer have been effective without the “protective cocoon” and without the tutor/mentors who became surrogate parents?

Answer 7

It is doubtful.

After all, inner-city high schools had such abysmal graduation rates and such abysmal academic performance for their few graduates that it was a well-known fact in IHAD circles in the 1990’s that Harvard could easily grab all of good inner-city students and leave nothing for Yale, Princeton and Stanford.

There does not seem to be any reason to suspect that this situation has changed.

BTW, Eugene Lang (the IHAD-National founder) had negotiated agreements with all of the top schools (Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, etc.) that the IHAD tuition guarantee WOULD BE IGNORED for purposes of how large a scholarship the University itself would grant.

This “last dollar” policy enabled IHAD to serve many more inner-city students since all of the top universities were fighting each other for the Dreamers with “full ride” academic scholarships.

Question 8

In other words, aren’t “heroic measures” required for inner-city children who already “know” by Kindergarten that they are NOT eligible for their dreams???

[Please see Q&A 5-13 of the Third Short Quiz describing how all 35-40 children in the Kindergarten Class of the Baptist Church across the street from Yours Truly’s first public-housing-project IHAD program, were asked to draw what they would like to be when they grew up and ALL OF THEM drew nurses, teachers, airplane pilots, chefs, etc., etc., ALL OF WHOM WERE WHITE!!!]

Answer 8

Absolutely!!!

And by “heroic measures” is meant the “protective cocoon” and “surrogate parents” etc., etc., described above.

Question 9

In other words, don’t our inner-city children “know” by Kindergarten that their only realistic career objectives are Pimp or Pusher, or girl friend of a Pimp or Pusher graduating to Whore???

Answer 9

Yes.

Which is the main reason why inner-city schools have such abysmal records.

After all, is any education at all really necessary to become a Pimp or Pusher, or girl friend of a Pimp or Pusher graduating to Whore???

Question 10

Or, in yet other words, isn’t the abysmal performance of our inner-city schools a SOCIOLOGY problem rather than an EDUCATION problem???

Answer 10

Absolutely!!!

Question 11

And, for example, closing an inner-city school with “failing” statistics in favor of a charter school staffed by teachers/administrators who are NOT trained educators MAKES NO MORE SENSE THAN SHUTTING DOWN AN INNER-CITY POLICE PRECINCT IN WHICH A CRIME IS COMMITTED AND HIRING AMATEURS IN THEIR PLACE???

Answer 11

Absolutely!!!

Question 12

Did we make this point in these terms during our focus for our 9/12/2012 meeting on “The Life and Death of the Great American School System” by Diane Ravitch (NYU’s Research Professor of Education and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education)?

Answer 12

Yes.

Question 13

And did Prof. Ravitch like our analogy so much that she included it without attribution (BTW we do NOT mind our ideas being used w/o attribution) in her next book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the School Privatization Movement” which was the focus of our 6/17/2015 meeting?

Answer 13

Yes.

Question 14

So how can this SOCIOLOGY problem be addressed???

Answer 14

Please read on.

Question 15

Can America afford to wait on the most prominent de facto “affirmative action” program that the U.S. Supreme Court does NOT dare to attack -- America’s sports scholarships that are awarded disproportionately to our inner-city “gladiators”???

Answer 15

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 16

Can America afford to wait for the effect of TV sports shows that feature African Americans as erudite commentators? And Hollywood movies and TV programs that feature attractive and intelligent African Americans? In other words, don’t American’s accept such African Americans while subconsciously thinking that they are exceptions???

Answer 16

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 17

Did The Atlantic Magazine on 5/23/2018 feature an article entitled “An Unusual Idea for Fixing School Segregation” featuring an idea by a recent Yale Law School Graduate who focused simultaneously on “K-12 segregation, college admissions and the lack of diversity at top universities”?

Answer 17

Yes.

Question 18

Was the recent graduate’s thinking sparked by a report that a predominantly-black school district in the St. Louis metropolitan area had lost its accreditation, that Missouri law permits students in such a district to transfer to a nearby accredited school district, and that the residents of the nearby affluent school district were in an uproar about the pending transfers?

Answer 18

Yes.

Question 19

Did the recent graduate recognize the fears of the affluent parents that their school district’s standards would plummet and that the “solution” would be “to take demographics of schools into account in college admissions” so that the affluent parents had nothing to fear?

Answer 19

So he apparently thought!!!

But the history of “white flight” means an all-out contest to be the first to sell your home and move before everyone else does, causing a collapse in property values.

And even if it were theoretically possible to get universities to agree “to take demographics of schools into account in college admissions” why would any parent think that her/his child who had now been subjected to a more-deficient K-12 education (as the recent graduate conceded would be the case), would do as well in college after being admitted???

Question 20

Did the recent graduate’s education apparently fail to teach the history of “white flight” so that, as a practical matter, taking demographics into account is really nothing more than the U.S. Supreme Court’s permission in Fisher vs. University of Texas to take into account the race of the few survivors of America’s “Apartheid” (Jonathan Kozol’s terminology) K-12 schools?

Answer 20

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 21

What is the ancient and long-forgotten concept of “magnet schools”?

Answer 21

Magnet Schools, in Educational Theory, were schools that pushed the percentage of inner-city children to the maximum that would be tolerated by affluent parents, BUT WERE SO OUTSTANDING IN TERMS OF FACULTY, PROGRAMS, FACILITIES, ETC., ETC., that affluent parents would still want their children to attend.

The reason why the concept is largely “long forgotten” is that taxpayers rarely, if ever, approve the necessary level of financing required for such schools.

Question 22

Would it be constitutionally permissible for states and/or school districts to establish so-called “magnet schools” in economically-depressed areas that are so outstanding that they attract students from nearby affluent neighborhoods?

Answer 22

So it would seem. After all, nobody is being forced to attend “magnet schools.”

Question 23

Would parents/families in such a setting have a strong incentive to “adopt” a less-affluent student to tutor/mentor?

Answer 23

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 24

Could admission of an affluent student (and the affluent student’s continued enrollment) be conditioned on the affluent student and her/his family’s tutoring/mentoring of a less-affluent student?

Answer 24

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 25

Could this be a “blue print” for A TYPE OF “charter school” that the federal government could foster on a grand scale?

Answer 25

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

BTW, if the U.S. Supreme Court as the nation’s highest (though unelected) legislative body, decides to interfere, there is a world of difference under the U.S. Constitution between what a state or locality is permitted to do, and what the U.S. Government can do. [Though this would mean some, and hopefully many, federal K-12 schools rather than the federal government funneling money to states and localities for K-12 education.]

Question 26

Does anyone have any other “bright ideas” about how to address America’s “Apartheid” (Jonathan Kozol’s term) K-12 Schooling and what it has produced – a Permanent 30% Under-Caste?

Answer 26

Anyone???

Question 27

And does anyone think that free public college tuition and vocational training is likely to have much impact on America’s “Apartheid” (Jonathan Kozol’s term) K-12 Schooling and what it has produced – a Permanent 30% Under-Caste?

Answer 27

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

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