Racine Unified claims that poverty is the cause of the districts dismal academic record. Let us examine that claim.
For the sake of argument, let us assume that the poverty stricken in Racine have $0 to spend on education.
With few or no exceptions, Racine Unified students live in homes with heat and electricity. They have enough food in their stomaches such that obesity is a big problem, while malnutrition is virtually non existent. They get a free education paid for by the government. For enrichment outside of school, there is a library, within walking distance of many, that offers free access to books and computers.
Everything is free. How can the lack of money be the cause of poor academic achievement?
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15 comments:
"Fully funding" education is another way of saying "give us more money, and shut up about what we say we need (at the moment)"
That's why poverty is the main reason why students can't learn. ;-)
Nice racket where there will never be accountability, because the money is always short (by RUSD logic)
Denis said: "With few or no exceptions, Racine Unified students live in homes with heat and electricity."
In the 2008-2009 school year RUSD had 835, that's EIGHTHUNDRED and THIRTYFIVE homeless students.
http://www.journaltimes.com/chart-wisconsin-homeless-students-by-school-district/pdf_119c6200-f50f-11df-a5b0-001cc4c03286.html
And that is just the begining of how misinformed and off-base, not to mention simplistic this post is.
Denis, doubling down on this topic after failing to provide a cogent defense of your last post is a fool's errand.
Sean, RUSD has a rather, uh, liberal, definition of homelessness. You might want to take a look at that. There are not now nor have there ever been more than a handful of kids sleeping in cars or on park benches.
I don't think you won the last debate, or any previous one for that matter. But I must say RUSD has done a great job of instilling in you unwarranted self esteem. So you have that going for you.
Sean, RUSD defines homelessness as follows:
(a) Children sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing;
(b) Children living in “motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations”
(c) Children living in “emergency or transitional shelters”
(d) Children “awaiting foster care placement”
(e) Children whose primary nighttime residence is not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation (e.g. park benches, etc.)
(f) Children living in “cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations…”
Now by no means do I wish to minimize the plight of these kids, but please note that kids moving in for a time with relatives are considered homeless. I suspect that the vast majority of "homeless" kids actually live in homes.
And by this definition, I too was homeless when I moved in with mom for several months when I first moved to Racine. I lost my housing in Chicago because I sold my house to someone else. Obviously I was not in a dire situation but if someone had the incentive to drive up the numbers of homeless, I would have met the technical definition of a homeless person.
But we are getting a bit off track as is typically the case with you Sean. Do you have any evidence whatsoever to suggest that more than a handful of students are not living in homes or shelters with heat and electricity as I noted in my post? If so, bring it on.
"RUSD had 835, that's EIGHTHUNDRED and THIRTYFIVE" - Sean
If you are going to insult someone's intelligence by explaining what 835 is, could you please do it correctly?
The following are not words.
EIGHTHUNDRED
THIRTYFIVE
I normally ignore errors because mistakes happen, but you went out of your way to insult someone's intelligence.
Slinkeey you have hit upon something that I have always found to be quite entertaining - someone who is trying to be smug and make condescending remarks but has a problem with grammar and spelling. Sean is welcome here but you are wasting comciousness reading anything he writes.
Consciousness - as in awake -
O.K. Denis, suppose you're right and only half of those 835 homeless students are truly having severe housing issues that are disrupting their lives. That's still 417.5 students (FOURHUNDREDSEVENTEENPOINTFIVE!), a far cry from your "few or no" exceptions. You don't even know your own community. No wonder you lose these debates and don't even recognize it.
Here's another one you got TOTALLY wrong: "They have enough food in their stomaches such that obesity is a big problem, while malnutrition is virtually non existent."
Racine County has a food insecurity rate of 37%, I'm sure it much higher in the city of Racine and even higher still in the inner city as the food insecurity rate among WIC client is 37% and they have a hungber rate of 14%.http://www.uwex.edu/ces/flp/cfs/pdf/Racine.pdf
The obesity part of your comment is even more telling about how out of touch you are. Poor people suffer more from obesity. This is because food that is bad for you is cheap and food that is good for you is more expensive. Futhermore, while there is no shortage of fast food chains and convenience stores in the inner city where you can get junk food, there are no supermarkets where you can get good nutricious food. In fact the supermarkets that you can walk to, like the Pig that was on Grove and Lindermann ever since I can remember, are gone.
It's more than obvious that you don't know what you're talkling about and that you're grasping at staws again in defense of your failed argument on education. Your tax hating, union hating, public hating ideology has fueled your fallacies and blinded you to the truth. It's the poverty . . .
Sean writes:
O.K. Denis, suppose you're right and only half of those 835 homeless students are truly having severe housing issues that are disrupting their lives.
Sean, if you are supposing I am right, that is fine with me, but please don't mischaracterize what I wrote. I don't think for a minute that there are more than a few RU kids sleeping in anything other than a proper home or shelter equipped with heat and electricity. Such elastic definitions of problems such as homelessness, and food insecurity, are liberal tools used for political purposes, as you are clearly demonstrating.
I will grant you that it would be preferable for a child to have a stomach full of an arugula salad with fresh ground pepper than a McD's Big Mac, but either choice will not prevent a student from hitting the books.
The problem is not poverty. It is liberals like you enabling failure.
By the way, how does one experience food insecurity when it is given to you for free at school? Just one more reason to show up for school and learn something.
Answer: By not having enough food when you're not at school. DUH!
Homelessness, food insecurity and poverty are "liberal tools". You're Cult of Con tool. Sheesh!
You've failed to identifiy ANYTHING about RUSD that explains the high rate of student failure. Yet you stick to your so-called "argument" that it's not the high rate of poverty in the City of Racine, but rather some intrinsic (yet unidentified) property of the public school system that is to blame, because it's an article of faith and to reject it would be to blaspheme.
I will be getting to the real cause of poor academic achievement Sean but for the moment I am using you to assist in the development of my argument.
Isn't it rather strange that we have both an obesity epidemic and a food insecurity epidemic in the same community at the same time? Perhaps we could address the former with more of the latter.
You say I have not identified the real problem. True enough. I am first dismantling the nonsense claims of RU who claim it is the poverty. Poverty ought to be a motivator to get an education, but somehow it isn't at RU. Blaming poverty for poor academic achievement is like blaming hunger for skipping meals.
Meanwhile, you have offered no reason why poverty, defined as the lack of money, would cause someone to forgo something of value being offered for free. Why Sean, why? Why aren't the food insecure refusing food?
Denis said: "I will be getting to the real cause of poor academic achievement . . ."
REALLY? WHEN? Because we've had this same discussion several times both here on over at the old KBR and you have NEVER identified it. What on Earth are you waiting for? Bring it on!
Oh and I'd still like the name of that school district you can provide that supports you're argument.
You also said "Isn't it rather strange that we have both an obesity epidemic and a food insecurity epidemic in the same community at the same time?" No it isn't strange at all, I already addressed the reasons why that is the case not only in racine, but in poor areas all over our country where 1 in 4 people have hunger problems. Bringing it up again just demonstrates that you're completely out of touch with your own community.
You don't understand the issues that they have to deal with, because you don't have to deal with them. Hell you think selling your house in Chicago and moving to Racine is somehow equivalent to the housing issues of the poor and their children in your own community, don't you Leona?
Gosh why would anyone, let alone 835 children, living under the following conditions be struggling?
(a) Children sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing;
(b) Children living in “motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations”
(c) Children living in “emergency or transitional shelters”
(d) Children “awaiting foster care placement”
(e) Children whose primary nighttime residence is not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation (e.g. park benches, etc.)
(f) Children living in “cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations…”
Did you go to school in Racine Unified where you would have sat along side the parents of these children? What about your brief stint as a social worker? Have ever had any real contact these people? Or have you spent your life in an ivory tower filled with trinkets and baubbles?
Sean must have his fingers in his ears going "lalalala," having said "REALLY? WHEN? Because we've had this same discussion several times... and you have NEVER identified it. What on Earth are you waiting for? Bring it on!"
Denis answered your question in his previous post: "The problem is not poverty. It is liberals like you enabling failure."
Before you dismiss that with yet another snarky comment, let's listen in on what Jesse Jackson Jr. said about this. Mind you, this was many decades ago (1970's), before he went into race-hustling full time, and is the only thing he has ever said that I agree with:
"If our black youth can run faster, jump higher, and shoot basketballs straighter than anyone else, on an inadequate diet, then they should be able to achieve in school as well."
Put the blame where it's deserved, Sean. On liberal enablers of failure like yourself and RUSD.
What a ludicrous claim Gearhead. If we liberals were having that effect then education would suck in the blue states and be great in the red states. Of course the opposite is true.
Another looney allegation from the conosphere rebuffed.
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