Monday, December 16, 2013

STUDENTS FIRST PROP H PROPONENTS VINDICATED BY PROGRESSIVE MATT HANEY

In Sunday's Examiner article, "School placements akin to college admission", writer Joel Engardio makes a strong case for the failure of the latest school assignment system. In response to Stanford's Center for Education Policy Analysis, which cited data demonstrating a propensity for families to self-select same race schools, Board of Ed Commissioner Matt Haney is quoted saying, "It shook me a bit. People are picking schools that look like them when their neighborhood school would actually be more diversified if everyone just went there."

I wasn't shaken by this revelation. It's obvious. This is what  our group, Students First, the creators of Prop H, had been saying all along - that neighborhood schooling would increase diversity throughout the district because of the uniquely diverse nature of a majority of neighborhoods.
Haney went on to say, "Some people say that what we have now is the best bad option. But I don't think we should just throw  parents to 'The Hunger Games' and say 'good luck'. If the system isn't working for people, we need to address that." Engardio elaborated on Haney's comment that parents face " a classic prisoner's dilemma", saying, "if ten families live on the same block, they could work together to improve a struggling neighborhood school. But if five families win the lottery for a top school elsewhere, five are left with less incentive to commit to the local school. They could opt for private education or leave The City."

And they do.  All the money spent, human resources, community meetings, Board meetings, committee meetings and testimony by experts that went into creating the assignment system is negated by the simple facts that we have more students in private schools and the fewest families percentage-wise of any American city. If Haney sees the high rate of African American suspensions (see last post) as problematic, he should be livid that America's most progressive city has a school policy which drives people away from public education and out of The City itself.
Haney said it all with this comment: "I was willing to excuse some of the anger, the frustration, families leaving San Francisco - because our crazy system had a bigger goal of better outcomes. Now I question if it is all worth it. If the system isn't accomplishing its goals, then what's the point?"
Exactly. Thank you, Matt, and please read my earlier post,"SFUSD Manipulating Assignment Data" to see how your administration has been manipulating data to hide the failure of its assignment system.

100 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is true. The real people hurting San Francisco schools are those going to private school or moving away. The board attacked those who want to make the schools better but could lose their jobs if they have to drive additional hours daily, adding to stress, expense, time studying lost, family time lost, inconvenience, etc.

I say, strictly limit those coming in from another area to a popular West Side non-alternative school to those who are disadvantaged economically, requiring those who are gentrifying neighborhoods to take the next step and gentrify the schools, as they have done in many cases (Alvarado, McKinley, Aptos and Balboa were once feared schools and now are popular, and there are many others).

The board wants integration and is very liberal. I want integration too. But the real opponents of integration are moving and choosing private school. Those wanting a neighborhood school are relatively progressive and would welcome diversity but simply don't want to drive long distances. It's a matter of convenience. It's a competitive world and if you take an hour and a half away from a family 180 days of the year, 270 hours a year, some families just making it will crack, or if not will sleep less, spend less time together, learn less and have less money for other things like tutors and novels and trips, which can be very educational for the child.

It isn't working. Please find a way to make the schools more diverse but also to guarantee every child a school within a mile for elementary and 2 for middle, with rare exceptions for the few neighborhoods far from any schools like SOMA, but in that case, make it 2 miles.

We can do this. Kudos to Haney for at least being honest enough to admit he was wrong in opposing Prop H. Admitting you were wrong is something most people cannot do. A new plan will increase test scores.

Anonymous said...

To reply to the comment above, there are lots of popular schools not on the west side. Most of them in fact. I assume you are for neighborhood schools. If this is so, why in the world do you want to give someone from a distant neighborhood a preference, rich, poor or in between? I jut don't get your comment at all.

Anonymous said...

What you people don't realize is that the reason many of us don't buy the idea that you want to go to school in your neighborhood is that for decades, really since the integration of the 1960s, whites have made any and every excuse to avoid going to school with black and brown and sometimes even Asian people. When black people move into your neighborhood, you move out in droves and deprive them of their pensions by taking your taxes with you, like in Detroit. If they are far, you want your neighborhood school, if they are close, you move away. How many whites left their own "neighborhood" in response to blacks moving in. Remember when Visitacion Valley was all Irish Catholic? And that murderer Dan White killed two people and got away with it because those same Irish Catholics pretended to buy the Twinkie defense but really hated blacks and gays, not to mention Jews (the prosecutor), serving on the jury right before moving to the suburbs. You don't fool me. You want segregation!

Whites will always make the argument that leads to racism. Whatever keeps their kids away from blacks and browns. If there are no trees and there are blacks, they gotta move to the trees, it's crucial, if there are trees, then it's something else, weather. People here say weather, but in Chicago it's hotter in the City and they move to the foggy suburbs. Phooey on your new plan. Phooey on Matt Haney for lying to us when he was running and pretending he was one of us.

Phooey.

Anonymous said...

Is Phooey your name? I guess every white person is a racist except you. How extraordinary! You deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

Unknown said...

Neighborhoods in San Francisco are highly diversified with some exceptions in wealthy areas, west end with the large Chinese population and a few other pockets. BVHP is no longer a a dominant African American neighborhood. SF is one of the least segregated cities in America. Are you trying to tell me that whites will live with other races, but won't send their kids to school with them?

You are accusing me of wanting segregation which is deplorable, but expected from you. No surprise there. You should be angry with the BOE for instituting another assignment system that failed to achieve its goal when a simple look at the map tells you that diversified neighborhood schools is a no brainer in this city.

Anonymous said...

Don, not Phooey here, responding to your prior question. I believe the system before about 2002 was a good one. I understand they can't take race into account anymore. However, I think the idea of diversity is important. I wouldn't want Gianninni to have .5% black kids and 2% Latino. However, the idea of integration was undermined when upper middle class whites and Asians, the people they were seeking to add to to diversify the school with blacks and Latinos, from the East side applied to West Side schools just so they could avoid going to a school they would make diverse, and causing others near the school not to get in. That was never the intent and this action undermined the whole system. If they didn't apply, and they were never supposed to but were taking advantage of the fact they couldn't technically be prevented from doing so, violating the spirit but not the letter of the law, there would be space for everyone on the West Side to go to school at least close to home. I realize Clarendon and Grattan wouldn't be 100%.

The fact is, SFUSD wanted some on the west side to be forced to go East to make it look like they were making progress in each school when really it's just a demographic shift. Poor people can't afford SF anymore and are being driven out.

I would favor 10-20% of spots being set aside by making sure there are enough schools on the West Side (re-open Cabrillo) and strictly prohibiting those of high income on the East side from using the lottery. And that includes high school. I know upper middle class whites and Asians who live in the Mission and Tenderloin and send their kids to Washington or Lincoln. High school now is pure lottery outside of Lowell and SOTA with an advantage to being from CTIP1, so Washington and Lincoln, which had made it into the top 500 U.S. schools in Newsweek, are now back to being off any list. Too many kids are exhausted and don't do as well as they did when Washington was 80% kids from the Richmond, Haight and Northern Sunset with a small number from the Fillmore and Tenderloin and Hayes Valley/Duboce for diversity sake.

I think we need to first guarantee every child a chance to go to a school close to home. Any extra spots should go to disadvantaged kids, as much as possible black and Latino.

This will make all our schools more diverse.

You're right, this plan failed. Integrated schools are a goal. When I moved here, Alamo was 6% black. Now it's under 1% black, under the new plan, the follow up to the diversity index.

Hany is smart enough to admit to a mistake.

Unknown said...

11:37: I don't have much time to respond this morning so quickly...

For me, the main problem with these various iterations of forced student assignment outside of neighborhood is the loss of community. No longer are neighbors schoolmates. There's a tremendous human toll in this respect. It plays out in reduced friendships, commuting, volunteering, cost, time and a number of other aspects that make communities less cohesive and stresses the family. This has all been done to create more diversity, though diversity in itself is not the goal of an education system.

The areas with the weakest schools have the highest enrollment from within the neighborhood. I understand that some of that is economic.) I send my younger son to a school in the heart of the Western Addition, Gateway Middle. It is a very diversified school and after Alamo I think it's a great experience for my son. I believe in the value of diversity if there's any doubt, but it isn't the end all to be all like the Board of Education believes.

Anyway, out of time, but when I get a chance I will provide a better reply.

Anonymous said...

If you have segregated schools in the Avenues you'll draw conservative white Irish Catholics who will start a war with the Chinese and Russians. It will be vicious. They will be very violent. Then if blacks or Latinos move in later, they'll move out in droves, causing a collapse in real estate prices. In the '70s when they ran away from the blacks houses in the Sunset were under $20-30,000, even $15,000 in some cases. It could happen again. We should at least make sure every school in the Sunset is 20% black and Latino/Hispanic, with maybe a few Samoans, just to make sure we don't attract racist harassers of Jews who will later flee and cause a property collapse which could wreck the City's finances. I lived through it in the '70s. It started in the '60s. It was awful. Now they say how horrible it was, but these people believed strongly in white flight as a social good. You would go to any bar, bakery, the Irish Cultural Center. I know, my husband was against it, but he is Irish, and most of his friends were for it. It was awful. Just awful. It must never happen again. Phooey.

Anonymous said...

That would never happen. Blacks are leaving San Francisco and the South and Latinos can barely afford SF, particularly the Sunset. Google is taking over. There are so many good jobs. I know you're angry about that happening before, but there is no risk of it happening again, it's another time. Again, the Irish Catholics and other whites, including some Jews, Italians, WASPs, etc., did abandon neighborhoods and Cities as blacks moved in and it was not fair to Detroit and Cincinatti and a few other Cities and hurt SF and Oakland for a while. But that isn't the reality now. That's the past. White flight was wrong, but let it go. It's a new era. It's now mostly about Asians doing the best due to focus and study hours and whites struggling to keep up and leaving the state too and 1 in 7 babies being born 2 races, or in some cases more. Let the past go. Let's move on.

Anonymous said...

Matt Haney needs to excuse it all. Social justice is more important than convenience. The Civil War was inconvenient. The Sit Ins and Vietnam Protests were inconvenient. Suffrage was inconvenient. The Harvey Milk Gay Rights Movement, busing, ending apartheid, fighting for gay marriage, inconvenient. Social justice always trumps convenience. Phooey.

Unknown said...

Those were mainly political movements, not public policies. Is destroying communities what you call social justice?

Read the Examiner article. They are turning San Francisco into a madhouse and failing at their own goal to create diversity.

As far as I am concerned the whole assignment system is an attempt to paper over the District's failure to raise up the lower performing school, including a majority of the SIG schools. That's because they have put all their energy into diversity in the name of social justice rather than academic achievement in the name of education.

Unknown said...

You're saying Matt Haney should ignore the facts because social justice trumps reality?

Anonymous said...

What the Irish Catholics and other whites did in the '60s-'80s, the white flight moviement was one of the most insidious and evil and manipulative white racist movements in history and difficult to confront due to plausible deniability ever concocted. Any individual might like somewhere else, but as a whole, it was clear it was a racist movement designed to negate a noble cause, busing. If whites had embraced it, there would be no need for a lottery now, you'd have Visitacion Valley heavily white, the Mission heavily white families (not Google/Twitter racist yuppies planning to move or go private but real inherent families being part of the community like before) and you'd have natural integration. Did you know Willie Mays was prohibted from buying a home in St. Francis Woods because he was black by a process in the contracts where you'd pledge not to sell to a black person? Diane Feinsteine used to own such a home. Title Pledge. This was a movement which is recent enough to have impacted the parents of today. Many of the parents never went to school with blacks and are terrified their kids do so. In fact, the most black schools, it has been shown, are the least selected on the lottery forms by white parents. Latino is more mixed due to a few popular Spanish immersion choices, but make no mistake about it, the hatred is still there with many of the Irish Catholics.

Yes, Matt Haney must be aware of history in making his decisions. What those people did was awful!

Anonymous said...

Deed Pledge. Awful. Disgraceful. Must be fixed. Phooey.

Unknown said...

I deleted a couple comments because you, Phooey, are way off the topic and still working out your childhood traumas on an education blog. Go see a psychiatrist. Blogging is not going to help you. Besides I cannot tolerate your stream of racial hatred against any people, white, black or otherwise.

"The real people hurting San Francisco schools are those going to private school or moving away."

The real people hurting SF are the members of the Board of Ed. They are the ones who set up this assignment system and people are simply responding to it in the best interests of their families. Many of those people who bail out of public ed might not if they knew that the other around them were sticking with it - as was explained in the article. The fact that they do not want to be the lone few that will attempt school turnaround is not their fault. After all, it is even the responsibility of the parents to fix schools. That belongs to the district. SFUSD failed so they resorted instead to spread out the failure rather than allowing it to be concentrated at certain schools. The result of that is it's still concentrated at certain schools and high performance is concentrated at others. All their meddling has resulted in a tremendous degradation of the standard of living for many people while failing to meet the SAS objective of diversity, which was the wrong objective to begin with. I know I've said it before but... ironically, the schools would have been more diverse if diversity wasn't their objective and they had stuck to their true mission - improvement the academic performance of students through real educational reforms like upgrading teacher quality. The consent decree expired. This diversity-based SAS was something the BOE just couldn't let go. They got it all wrong. They failed in both their self- appointed mission and in their true mission.

SFUSD could fight to change union rules to allow "underserved" schools to retain the best teachers, but that would be considered anti-union and they won't touch union reform with a ten foot pole. They capitulated on school reform and resorted to a unproven and highly contentious assignment system instead. The problem is that their focus ought to be on bringing quality education to the schools, not a ever-evolving game of musical chairs.

Unknown said...

What are you doing, Phooey, - taking another day off on the taxpayers of California or do you get so much time in between hugging your students and not teaching them anything that you can fit in a little blogging?

Anonymous said...

If you must know I am at my sales job because teaching barely pays enough for rent in this City. People like me will soon be gone thanks to your Twitter/Google movement following the white flight movement to reclaim the City for the acceptable nerds who follow your Asian method of studying till you drop and not learning a thing about arts, psychology, history, racism, and poetry. You win Don, it's a world safe for Twitter Nerds and soon SF will only have people like you and no more people like me. I can barely make ends meet. You'd love to see me fired and replaced by a 25-year old Twitterite earning a merit pay bonus so they can afford to rent someone's non rent-control eligible basement or closet and live in disgusting fumes and vomit all the time. If I didn't have my second job I'd be commuting in from god knows where. I'm constantly broke. You'll be happy to know I got two $100 parking tickets in the past week because I have a bum knee and can barely walk, more like limp, with a walker. One of my students flipped me off yesterday and her dad thought it was funny. Her mom is in prison. So it's not a wonderful day, Don, it's not Mister Rogers' neighborhood now is it!?!? Phooey!

Unknown said...

First of all, I'm not part of any Twitter/Google movement, but we should be glad to have a booming technology industry here rather than elsewhere. The fact that rents are high was true long before that. Secondly, I didn't flee to the suburbs but moved back into The City from a suburban Oakland neighborhood. Thirdly, I don't subscribe (like the other frequent poster here) to the study till you drop mentality, though I do think children ought to do a reasonable amount of homework that is age appropriate and not just busy work. Fourthly, I sympathize with your low teacher wages as I, too, was a teacher, but that doesn't mean we should keep anyone and everyone on the job, especially if they abuse the system. Sick days and personal days are there for those reasons, not to run off and work somewhere else. Fifth, lots of people can't afford to live in San Francisco, but why are you blaming me for the economy here? You can get a job somewhere else which is what most people do when they can't afford to live somewhere. This is not the only place to live, but granted, there would be few other places that would tolerate an employee like you.

Anonymous said...

Don, how dare you say that!? You ARE part of the movement to make this a rich exclusive Republican City again like it was before 1965, and to have more rich white people move in and everyone you don't approve of leave. You want it to be rich Irish Catholics, WASPS, a few Asians who work twice as hard as whites for half the money like your friend advises, and sell out other minorities, unions and poor people. You want people like me who care about social justice gone, driven out by richer, younger, prettier people with firm butts and sexy legs so you and your gazillionaires can trick them into becoming your "sugarbabies" then abandon them when they get too old and gain 5 lbs. by daring to enjoy a meal, even laugh at them, humiliate them. You hate women. You hate humanity. I survive on merit. I was salesperson of the month last July and sold 2 homes. If I'd sold one, I'd have fallen behind on rent from my greedy landlord who used some loophole to make my apartment not rent-controlled.

You will not get me fired. I am too valuable a realtor. My students know, I tell them don't worry about the grades, you can talk to people, you can sell, you can find every loophole in the system, you can figure out a way.

I have students whose parents work full time but under the table, get subsidized housing, get foodstamps they wouldn't be eligible for if they claimed their income, get General Assistance, free Healthy San Francisco, free meals in the Summer, get charity from foodbanks and the Salvation Army and churches, always starting with a blank slate, having to lie to just survive in a white man's world, and do side jobs which are not legal but low risk and they still barely survive and often have to humiliate themselves with drugs, prostitution, one girl's dad gets paid to beat people up. Can you believe that? This guy risks prison to put food on his daughter's table. One family has all of the above and still got an eviction notice and only avoided eviction by getting not one, but two legal organizations for rental victims to threaten lawsuits and protest in front of the landlord's house.

You have no idea how hard it is to survive in the real world in San Francisco in 2013. You have no idea but you sit in judgement of everyone else from your Ivory Tower, from your perch on the mountain top, from your luxury box seat bought off the labor of slaves. Merry Christmas hotshot!!! Phooey.

Unknown said...

Phooey, you are entitled to your opinion about the topic of this post. Please don't rant on about different stuff.

I'm sorry you're having a bad day. It isn't fun when a teacher's student is flipping her off with the father laughing.

AB said...

I have to take exception to blaming families that choose private school or leave the City for the problems in SFUSD. They are making the best of a bad situation, making a choice that is right for their family. It is unfair to ask them to allow their kids to be unwilling test subjects in a failing social experiment.

We have had 6 families from playgroup and preschool leave for Marin, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa Counties. SFUSD issues were a significant motivating factor to leave, but commute, cost of living, more space were other reasons for moving. We also had 2 families leave the Bay Area because of the school assignment (they got nothing in rounds 1 and 2 of the lottery). Of those that stayed in SF we know 3 families that went public after being offered Private because they got first choice schools. We also know 2 families that went Private because of bad SFUSD lottery experiences. The sample size for this experience was 32 families.

If only the BOE took half the resources they put into failed diversity projects and re-allocated towards promoting academic excellence and achievement...

Unknown said...

AB -We're on the same wavelength.

AB said...

Phooey - your self-loathing race baiting schtick is tiresome and boring. You have become a tired one-trick pony.

Matt Haney is smart enough to recognize that the efforts to socially engineer school diversity have not worked. I respect that. I disagree with his policy objectives but respect that he can acknowledge that the efforts did not deliver the desired results. You could learn from his example.

Anonymous said...

Phooey your morals are horrific. It sounds like you are encouraging kids to not worry about grades, parents to commit welfare fraud and crimes, hard working students to study less, teachers to take every day off they can so they can get a side job, etc. You think it's OK to call in sick when you're not and to be paid to beat people up, you see that as a sign he loves his daughter? What about the daughter of the guy he beat up? And let consenting adults do whatever the hell they want, no one should be forced but no one is a victim if they are an adult and choose, if I get addicted to crack I won't blame the crackdealer, if a woman thinks escorting lasts forever, think again, just don't do it if you think it's forever, it's not, it's about youth and beauty and a quick fix. Move on. Study, Get good grades. And Asians make more than whites on average by over 30%, they aren't working twice as hard for half as much, give me a break.

I do agree with you and not AB in that whites have more options due to historical racism, if they make a decision which AB says is right for them but isn't an option for most other families, it perpetuates inequality, they can do it but I don't think it's right. It's far better to go to the imperfect school and try to turn it around than move away to a whiter suburb. The white parents who went to McKinley and now James Lick drastically improved the school both for whites and Latinos, same with Alvarado, Denman, and a number of others.

Also, a recent study on Amazon showed it's a fallacy, that adjusting for income, if a kid goes to a trophy or average school, Catholic, Secular Private, there is no advantage to private school on test scores. It's more about comfort and social segregation, stats show that kids do as well in either, but you do hurt those you leave behind.

Phooey, you need to focus more on teaching skills to these kids. You're on the right track calling out those who, though maybe not racist, perpetuate rather than take a stand with actions against inequality, you're right about teacher pay and a whole lot of other things. But you need to focus on nuts and bolts. Otherwise it's all just abstract.

Unknown said...

What do you mean "a recent study on Amazon"? If you read it post the link. You can't back up your views with worthless references.

Since our kids went to school together and I know you as more than a commenter on this blog but as a person, too, the problem with your view is that you don't do the things you espouse regarding school assignment. It's quite easy for you to say that people shouldn't leave SF just because they don't get their preferred school, especially since you don't help to turn around any schools. Apparently you think that's the job of other people.

When parents act in the best interests of their children to seek the best education for them, that's good parenting as opposed to all the deadbeat parents who aren't there for their kids. You're always brow-beating everyone about good parenting including sending their children to poor schools in circumstances in which similar parents don't have to as a result of the lottery. It would be something very different if all families had the choice to attend their neighborhood school or opt for an alternative. But that isn't the case as Joel Engardio explained in the article ... I already quoted it in the post.

You talk the talk but you don't walk the walk. I sent my younger child to Gateway Middle school in the heart of the Western Addition with a very diverse population. My son was shocked and still is by the behavior of some of the students who make learning difficult, especially when you suffer from ADHD. Of course, as you know the other son went to Lowell, though I counseled him to look at other publics.

You just have no moral authority on this issue and I think the other people who comment here should know your circumstance since you pretend to know better. You still remain anonymous.

Also you should know, in reference to you're frequent refrains - "I agree", when you post anonymously the only value in your words is derived by the power of your ideas. When you say "I agree" it makes no difference because there is no "I". If I do it it's in my name which is different. Make a case for something and the ideas stand on their own merit. Of course it would help if you wrote in a manner befitting your education. But more importantly, when educated people exchange ideas they listen and learn. Check out popular education forums like Ravitch or Meiers, not that I agree with them that much. But they are very scholarly proponents of their ideas, yet and they understand that developing ideas comes from keeping an open mind and not be married to any particular solution. It just isn't the scientific way.

AB said...

1:57 - I do not disagree that families leaving SFUSD can be a negative contributor to the greater good. I know families who have left and I know families with means who chose public school in San Francisco because of the greater good argument. My family is enrolled in SFUSD, we had no school until the waitpool process after school started after going 0/15 and 0/30 in rounds 1 and 2 - not exactly a great way to begin a potentially 13 year relationship.

I see first hand every day the challenges schools have focusing on academics with kids from such diverse home experiences and with a wide spectrum of issues (behavior, learning, readiness, nutrition, language, parental engagement) but am glad my kid is able to experience a broad cross section of society as it will give her the skills to function in society when she grows up. This does not mean I am accepting of mediocre teachers, under-resourced school sites, acceptance of academic mediocrity, or allocation of resources to failed social experiments.

Anonymous said...

Here is the study, very thorough, reading it now, better than I'd expected.

http://www.amazon.com/Public-School-Advantage-Schools-Outperform/dp/022608891X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387482948&sr=1-1&keywords=public+school+advantage

Anonymous said...

Don, I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on gas and time to drive across town, you are right, but I do think I walk the walk. Not many people adopt an African American foster child born with two horrible drugs in her system, the reason she was taken away from her mother, and ADD issues and spend the daily time and money for additional tutors to help her. I do it in a different way than you wish, you feel the only valid way would be if I sent my kids to Chavez and James Lick, I feel there are different ways. But I do walk the walk with significant time and effort and she is reading and a good student, and if social services hadn't stepped in she'd be in a bad part of Oakland with parents who don't care, most of her genetic siblings have had serious problems with the law, dropping out, etc., I only know this because the woman was in her '40s and she was taken away from her due to their past actions. I don not want to use my name because it is private and no good can come from it, I don't want people to use something against me if I say the wrong thing I later change my mind on, as Haney did on neighborhood schools. Sometimes I get passionate when I argue. Most foster children are not adopted at 7 months, most get 18 homes in 18 years, and are more likely to end up homeless or in prison than even attending college, let alone graduating. So I do walk the walk and I realize you do to at Gateway. But please understand, I have my reasons for not wanting to use my name, I have had posts threatening me when someone thought they figured out my name on thesfkfiles. They actually had my name wrong, but that's another story.

As for action, there are different ways, but it is my opinion that if every family just does what's best for their children and doesn't worry about social justice or doing something to counter the advantages of the past of certain groups, we'll have a caste society. We do now have a caste society, we have less class mobility than in Europe, Japan, Canada, and greater suffering if you are poor.

I agree 100% you should have a guarantee to go to school close to home. I think we could do that and still make the schools more diverse if we set aside 10-20 for disadvantaged kids. We probably couldn't do this with Grattan and Clarendon, but we could guarantee them something nearby, one of 2-3 choices, and maybe we should make the popular schools bigger to accomodate everyone in the neighborhood plus some disadvantaged. I do think it's wrong for middle and upper class whites and Asians from the East side to use the lottery when it would make the schools more diverse.

I greatly respect those who have gone into schools and worked to turn them around, McKinley and others.

I do also agree with you that they should fire bad teachers and true reform requires changing current seniority/tenure rules. I wish Matt Haney would rethink his position on that issue.

Anonymous said...

Oh Phooey on all that! You cannot have equal opportunities by adopting a foster child because another doesn't get adopted. You just adopt one child and they end up acting and thinking they're white and selling out their people whom they don't know and grow to not care about. I've seen blacks adopted by whites, and American Indians and Latinos, they just end up selling out like John McCain's East Indian daughter. You need solutions that help all oppressed people: higher minimum wage, scholarships, more food stamps, nutrition, more public housing, higher pay for teachers, seniority/tenure put into the state constitution not just state law which could be changed by a ballot initiative, racial understanding forums everyone must go to like we had in the '60s and '70s (I sat in the back for being white, but I learned a lot), community meetings, and government sponsored therapy for the poor who never get it, WIC, etc. They should also have a stronger version of rent control for teachers where their rent actually goes down in nominal dollars each year they serve society as a teacher. And we must drive all the racists out of San Francisco!

This is what you don't get. Adopting a child makes them think they're white. I agree with Louis Farrakhan that white people shouldn't be able to adopt black children and destroy their identity. We need solutions which help all poor people of all races, not one off fake solutions.

Phooey!

Unknown said...

You can't blame people who live in SE neighborhoods for using the lottery when the lottery is a districtwide policy. That doesn't make any sense. That's why I say you are focusing on the wrong boogeyman. It's the BOE, not the parents.

Sure, If everyone committed to public education it would be so much better, but that's akin to the same utopianism that is the stuff of Phooey's absurd commentary. People have all sorts of reasons for going out of the city or going private and many of those private schools offer scholarships and financial aid to woo a diverse applicant pool.

But here's the deal. You keep insisting that people are racists for not accepting the school down the street in many instances. That's my problem with your statements. It is true that many people choose schools that look like them, but that is not racism, though it could be. People want their kids to feel comfortable and some people don't like the collision of culture that is school diversity, especially when their kids are not good English speakers. Why is it that poor parents in poorer neighborhoods overwhelmingly pick their local school.? There are financial factors, but the biggest reason is that people like to be in the comforts of their own neighborhood.

Regarding your adopted daughter, she a beautiful little girl and you did a great thing in adopting her. (Just ignore Phooey's nonsense) Much credit to you and I'm sure you love her a lot, but that has nothing to do with your efforts to blame people for not attending "underserved" schools when you don't yourself. I understand it isn't always necessary or convenient to personally adopt the ideas you promote, but you would have much more moral authority in this instance if you did. But I know you'll never send your kids to a lousy school and be one of those parents that participate in schools turnaround.

By the way, I'm using the District's terminology "underserved", but SFUSD is the one that produced a budget. If they are underserved whose fault is that? That's just one of those levers they like to use to push the Overton Window further left. And are they underserved? The SE schools get considerably more funding per pupil than other schools between the former SIG monies, Targeted Instructional Improvement Block Grant, QEIA, Title funding and a myriad of other sources that schools like Alamo see none of. SFUSD treats the west end schools like second class citizens, but from my point of view, that the real nature of the hardened left. When they say underserved, they are talking about the fact the students are poor, not that the schools are poor. They are mixing two ideas to confuse the public and they're buying it.

I forgot that other guys name under Carranza, but he's quoted saying he'll look for any stray funding he can get to continue the legacy of SIG. Well, SIG wasn't all that great and is it really appropriate for administrators to go scrounging through the budget looking for money for their pet peeves? These tax dollars belong to all the students.

cont

Unknown said...

SFUSD is race-obsessed. I watched a video on You Tube of Carranza delivering an introductory speech at the Administrators Institute. He cited some racist tweets about the fact that a Mexican kid sang the Star Spangle Banner as the reason why we need to make all schools diversified. I was watching thinking to myself - is this guy for real? He's running a public school system in San Francisco and using a racist tweet to promote his social justice agenda which promotes diversity above all and almost never speaks to the real mission of schools. It was eye-opening. He went on for almost an hour and said nothing about student achievement. He's a slick talker and I came away with the impression that he likes himself a lot.

You need new people in the central office who will run the schools for the purpose of education - people who will think about how to improve the schools themselves, not just push the pieces around to promote a failed and wrongheaded agenda. Stop blaming the parents.

AB said...

Phooey -
Q1: In your world view can non-whites/asians be racist?

Q2: If 'society' committed to expanding food stamps, public housing, scholarships, etc. would the qualifying criteria be purely based on economic need?

Q3: If minimum wage was increased to whatever level you deem appropriate would it improve the employment opportunities for kids who fail to graduate, who do not learn basic math and language skills?

Unknown said...

Plenty of minority parents with golden tickets elect to go to schools nearby with students of similar culture. Are they racist for doing so? I would never say that.

Oh well. it's only crazy Phooey.In her world only whites can be racists.

I had a good laugh when she cited famous Jew-hater and self-proclaimed racist, Louis Farrakhan.

AB said...

12:12 - Assuming that the statement that 'neighborhood schools would be more diverse than the current system' as cited in prior posts is true and you set aside a number or percentage of seats for CTIP1 (or otherwise determined 'disadvantaged kids) SFUSD would need to expand facilities in the Richmond and Sunset to accommodate even just the resident population, leaving other schools significantly under enrolled. If the qualifying disadvantaged kids then chose non neighborhood schools the enrollment issue would be further exacerbated. (Re-opening the Cabrillo campus would certainly be a step in the right direction towards relieving this imbalance.)

The current lottery system essentially forces student population from western neighborhood into central and southeast schools (or out of SFUSD) masking the issues at some of these schools and deflecting the focus away from the failure of SFUSD to help its poor performing populations.

Just like a rising tide raises all boats - a sewage leak dirties all waters. Yes, the District has to recognize and deal with all the ills of society buts its focus should be on adapting curriculum to help all students thrive academically. The graduation report from an earlier thread, the failed diversity program all point to failure of leadership to deliver on the fundamental promise of a quality education to all of their students. It is this stench of failure that hurts all public school kids more than selective attrition by those that choose a different option for their kids.

AB said...

Don - I applaud you for allowing Phooey to continually expose her intolerant, hateful, illogical point of view for what it is.

I know plenty of families that could afford private school but choose public, and often not from the 20 most popular schools, for many reasons - convenience of location and schedule being the most common.

Anonymous said...

Ab, you'd be surprised how this might not be as difficult as you think. I have kids at Alamo and Presidio and under the old system, the vast majority of people who used the lottery to get in were not Latino or African American (or Samoan or Native American) and disadvantaged. They were generally those who could afford to drive a child across town. If you only let people go West if they are truly disadvantaged, very few will actually take them up on it, unless they provide busing, which they probably should. But 10-20% would leave enough space, 80-90% could fill it with the neighborhood kids because many go private, but fewer would with no lottery and a guarantee. I agree they may have to reopen Cabrillo and one shuttered school in the Sunset, I forget the name. They can always make a school a little bigger or smaller, that was a routine action in the past before they were trying to defend the lottery. Alamo used to serve an additional 100 kids when my daughter started. Rooftop used to serve half as many kids. Presidio serves 1200 now and once served 1500. It's all very malleable. I believe SOTA should be expanded, good kids aren't getting in and they are popular, be an arts super high school. Lowell could be expanded as well to allow more kids in on merit who are very close to making it. Lowell has a whole additional building full of classrooms and serves the same number of kids as before when I went there, 2,640, it could easily grow to 3200 which would mean more opportunity, more APs, etc.

Anonymous said...

AB, I do respect those people who chose public, they help us be more integrated and help our public schools. I don't respect people like Matt Damon who go on TV complaining about not supporting schools, then send their kids to private school, and he doesn't want to reform seniority/tenure which is the biggest problem in public schools. I know a few private schools really give a lot of scholarships but I think most give very few and mostly to connected people like the poor niece's kids, you need a reccomendation from someone in the school to get it, so it's doled out almost as pay to domestics, secretaries, etc., by the rich who control the school. Lick Wilmerding, Synergy, a few like that really have a lot of diversity and scholarships, but places like Hamlin and Burke cause San Francisco to be more segregated by both class and race. I respect the parents at McKinley infinitely more than those who just go to Burke or white flight saying they can't afford SF but usually move somewhere equally expensive like Orinda or Mill Valley or Burlingame, where the schools have no poor kids. The parents at McKinley were amazing, they did what everyone said couldn't be done, they are heroes. And many of them are now doing it to James Lick, which was once a horrible school and is getting much better. The average white kid at James Lick gets the same average test score as the average white kid at Presidio, Hoover or Gianninni, which didn't use to be true. The people who sent their kids there, after decades in which most white parents considered it unthinkable, did not hurt their kids' education at all, helped hundreds of disadvantaged Latino kids with their work, and may have helped it as their kids found it was easier to get into Lowell from there, which is a Golden Ticket in life. The parents at Burke, Hamlin, Mill Valley, etc. just perpetuated the unequal status quo.

AB said...

@2:14 - I would love to see capacity expanded to meet demand - if it's as easy as you suggest it is further evidence of out of control social engineering experiment perpetrated on San Francisco families.

When I matched applicant to capacity at neighborhood schools for the Richmond (all SFUSD provided data over the past 3 years)it looked like about 15% under capacity.

I doubt the district would ever expand capacity to meet demand let alone hold 20% of expanded capacity for disadvantaged kids as this would deplete enrollment at a number of schools and likely lead to a few closures.


AB said...

@2:20 Whether supported by data or not the reality is families will make their choice to leave SFUSD for Private or other Cities based on their perception.

My perception is that you cannot trust what SFUSD says because the data does not support their reality. And PPSSF, bless their volunteer souls, is too much of a mouthpiece for the District to have credibility beyond how the enrollment process works.

In my humble opinion SFUSD needs to demand excellence from its Leadership, Admin, Staff, Teachers, and Students and should celebrate achievement - shine a light on the achievers and build a culture of wanting to achieve. Instead we get selective disclosure of data spun to protect the objective when the results are clearly not there (SIG, achievement, diversity).

Anonymous said...

I agree PPSSF has lost credibility due to opposing Prop H, supporting the lie, and doing nothing to support reform of seniority/tenure. They have also failed in some other areas. I give them credit for volunteering and getting more people of means into our public schools, and they have done some good, but they are not honest and have a bias which stains their statements.

The study I refer to is nationwide, but from my observations I think it's true. I don't think St. Cecilia's white kids do better than those at Hoover, or Star of the Sea/St. Monicas, and I know several with one at Burke and one at Alamo and the Alamo kid ended up doing better. I've seen it with kids at Hamlin, several other schools. But I can't claim certainty as it's anecdotal, but I can claim it's a fact nationwide.

I agree with what you say in the third paragraph 100%. I couldn't have said it better myself.

And lastly, Phooey on Phooey, that's ridiculous. We need to move beyond race identification in favor of class mobility and opportunity. If you made interracial adoptions illegal you'd hurt a lot of children. I know in my case, the result will be better. I know this in many cases. John McCain adopted a girl who would have had a life of misery. I know nothing about her personally but I know he improved her life.

Anonymous said...

Not to mention my wife is Latina, so she is adopted by two races, neither her own, and is herself part of 3 races, white, black and Latina. So your whole assertion is ludicrous, Phooey. We don't need to be a nation at odds with itself, we need to unify.

Unknown said...

You said - "Kudos to Haney for at least being honest enough to admit he was wrong in opposing Prop H. Admitting you were wrong is something most people cannot do. A new plan will increase test scores."

Sometimes I like to go back and review what others have said, especially when they makes claims so patently untrue as this one. It is a matter of blog integrity. For example, I would not want Matt Haney writing in saying that my blog is being used to spread falsehoods and I don't want the blog to do so. So, as moderator, it is incumbent upon me to make corrections when necessary.
Opinions are opinions, but please refrain from ascribing to others comments they never uttered or even implied. The fact that Haney sees the assignment system has having failed to achieve its stated objective does not imply that he admitted he was wrong for opposing Prop H or that he now support neighborhood schools. The author suggested that changing the priorities could solve the problem, not Haney.

The greatest likelihood of a change, if indeed Haney can convince three others, is that neighborhood placement would move up a notch. But the only true neighborhood schools by definition means all neighborhood residents get a guaranteed seat at the neighborhood school and that is impossible with the current infrastructure. Not only is the west end mildly underresourced due to the policies of forcing students out via the lottery, but SE has a severe shortage of seat of up to 40%. Let me repeat - it is currently impossible to guarantee students a spot at their neighborhood school. And infrastructure has no quick and easy fix, though four or five years of a build-up, were it to happen, could see the puzzle changing. Given SFUSD's normally glacial pace of change, it could be even more.

But it's clear to me that with this board and administration SFUSD is not going to back away from the lottery. These people are radicals. Even if Haney gets 3 people, which is a stretch, it will likely be a compromise that involves more neighborhood preference and some iteration of CTIP1 preference. I can see little chance they will not reserve a certain percentage of seats for CTIP1 applicants at each school and that means oversubscribed schools will remain difficult for neighbors to gain entry into and undersubscribed schools will be easy to enter as they are now. That also means the schools in the middle would be affected the most depending upon the particular characteristics of each school's location and applicant pool.

And what do you mean by a new plan will improve test scores? Kinda vague.

Anonymous said...

Don, we can all just fight and divide over technicalities if you want. You seem to prefer demanding everyone else be perfect and dividing if they don't live up to your standards perfectly than unifying a diverse group behind anything. You've never succeeded to build a group with this method and you never will. You can start a new group of people and if you hold these standards you'll become infuriated at all of them. People just aren't perfect or anywhere close in the real world

As for possible/impossible, I believe they could do what you say they cannot by only allowing truly disadvantaged kids to get a spot. Very few truly disadvantaged kids want these schools. Walk around Alamo, for every one who got in via the lottery who is truly disadvantaged there are ten who got in from another neighborhood who are white and Asian and not poor. There are more people in west side schools whoa re not poor/disadvantaged and Latino / African American than there are people on the west side not getting any of their choices. You like to ignore this, but this is the key, eliminating anyone not disadvantaged from getting in via the lottery.

Far more neighborhood people are already getting into West Side schools due to the change. It's better than it was, but not for high school. I think you might even be able to let in both CTIP 1 and CTIP 2 people if they are truly disadvantaged because very few who are truly disadvantaged have the means or inclination to go west.

But get mad if you want. You seem to prefer that. It's not a good thing.

Unknown said...

If you go around saying people said things that they didn't actually say I will call you out on it because that kind of discourse is unacceptable on this blog and most anyplace else, even if you don't think so. In fact, for me not to say anything would be unacceptable.

If you think putting words in someone's mouth is a technicality, well, that's explains why you do it and find it to be of little consequence. I don't. We can fight for school reform and agree or disagree, but I will not lose my integrity in the process.

I would prefer if you didn't comment here if you make this site a place for misinformation.
Think about what you write, particularly when you speak on someone else's behalf.

Regarding your strategizing about school placement, using Alamo as an example, the reason why the great majority of students who hail from other neighborhoods aren't poor is because the African Americans and Latinos don't want to attend school there. You could say no one who isn't poor can get a CTIP preference, but that won't make more of the people with the preference want to attend. Each school has a different dynamic but in general this rule applies.

SFUSD has been trying for years to get non-Asian minorities to self-select higher demand schools with only minor success and most of that is result of the District closing and downsizing schools so that nearly half of those populations can't attend neighborhood schools where no seats are available. The areas adjacent to CTIP areas tend to experience the largest interest from CTIP1 applicants. Some of those families prefer to go out of area and some don't depending on finances and other personal considerations.

But SFUSD gave many of these folks no choice. So much for school choice. Is that any way to treat the populations you're trying to help?

Anonymous said...

I guess I was paraphrasing, but he seems to be saying the lottery wasn't worth it and should be either scrapped or changed at least. I agree. You're right, it depends on the school, Alamo and Lafayette could do so. Clarendon could not, it's just too popular. I think that if they can't guarantee everyone a district school, they could at the very least guarantee you one district school away, but it's best to reduce commute time the maximum possible to maximize study time. You're right, it's hypocritical. If they really cared about these kids they'd at least speak out against the abuse of seniority/tenure, that hurts kids far more than not having enough white people sitting next to you. Or Asians. I like integration, but having a bad teacher for a year is destructive.

Unknown said...

Your changing the subject every sentence.

AB said...

I just re-read the Student Assignment 2012-13 Report and found the following discussion to be an interesting read:

Question (page 23): Does the CTIP1 tie-breaker help reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school, and does it help provide equitable access to the range of opportunities offered to students?

Conclusion (page 36): In October 2012, the two largest cohorts of students living in CTIP1 were Latino (503 kindergartners) and African American (266 kindergartners), and they tend to be enrolled in schools near CTIP1 that are predominantly Latino and African American. The two smallest cohorts were White (88 kindergartners) and Chinese (66 kindergartners), and they tend to be enrolled in schools with a high percent of White and Chinese students.
It takes a while for new policies to show results; therefore it is too soon identify trends. It is not yet clear from the data that the CTIP1 tie-breaker is helping reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school. We plan to continue to monitor demand and enrollments, and expect it may take several more years before trends are revealed.

The District is, in effect, trying to make CTIP1 families go to non neighborhood schools they do not want to go to and cannot understand why they do not go.

More shockingly, the District effectively says that the CTIP1 neighborhood schools are not good schools. Perhaps this is the contributory cause to low test scores and poor school performance the District should focus on.

AB said...

Here's an interesting chart from 'Student Assignment - March 2011' report:

Students living in the attendance area as a % of capacity - Elementary Schools.
DREW 310%
NEW TRADITIONS 245%
SERRA 218%
WEBSTER 211%
MIRALOMA 208%
CARVER 192%
MILK 184%
BRYANT 168%
STEVENSON 167%
MOSCONE 162%
CLEVELAND 159%
GLEN PARK 159%
SHERMAN 156%
VIS VALLEY 155%
CLARENDON 151%
MONROE 150%
SHERIDAN 148%
TENDERLOIN 145%
SUTRO 145%
SLOAT 142%
JEFFERSON 141%
GRATTAN 132%
ALAMO 130%
HARTE 130%
LAFAYETTE 128%
ALVARADO 127%
PARKER 127%
YICK WO 127%
KEY 125%
FEINSTEIN 122%
EL DORADO 120%
COBB 118%
ARGONNE 116%

The above list shows District schools with capacity constraint issues. When a cluster of adjacent schools has capacity constraint it forces kids out of the neighborhood. (Note: the equilibrium is set at 116% to account for citywide schools that can absorb 16% of the citywide population.)

I am not aware of any unused classrooms at any of these schools so they are unable to expand capacity to meet neighborhood need, let alone set aside space for underserved students (as suggested by Anon yesterday). When mapped, you can see where additional school capacity would have to be added in order to fulfill a neighborhood school policy.

Anonymous said...

Don, every school on this chart is oversubscribed, from horrible and unpopular to magnet schools. This must include some kids who end up moving or going private. Additionally, you know as well as I that Alamo very recently was 17% bigger and we have 22 in a classroom from grades K-3 and 12 years ago had 29-30. The only way this makes sense is if there's some list of schools at 70 and 80% you're not including. You're right about the kids who are white and Asian taking spots outside of their neighborhood, that's got to stop. They're taking advantage of a loophole never intended for them with the blessing of PPS, the open blessing, even the encouragement. I've been at meetings where PPS people advocate bizarre strategies to gain a switch which they claim work, asking for every school that is popular even if you'd never go there so you can get a switch. That's why those in the know rarely get the worst schools. There's always a trick. There was another trick in the old system. Maybe we have to reopen Cabrillo, expand a few schools, etc. However, I can't believe this is impossible considering that across the U.S., the only other place I know of you can live near a district school and not get it is a part of North Carolina, a liberal part near Raleigh/Durham. Seattle had a similar policy to ours but dropped it a few years ago. In fact, we did this before 1999. I refuse to believe it's not possible. The goal is to say there's no space, we have no choice, which is why in the midst of parents complaining about losing the lottery they closed Cabrillo and one school in the Sunset. It's all a plot and we're just the suckers in their sick, twisted game, what Matt Haney now calls a "Hunger Game".

AB said...

There are 58 attendance area elementary schools - the 35 on the list have more K residents than seats, the remaining 23 have more seats than residents. The lottery system is the chosen approach to dealing with capacity imbalance, the chart shows that simply moving attendance area from the bottom to the top tie-breaker will not solve the neighborhood issue.

Interestingly, from the March 2011 Assignment Offers Report, only 26% of CTIP1 students chose any of these 35 schools as first choice.

The reason I pointed out there are no excess classrooms is to show that there are serious challenges to remapping enrollment to neighborhood schools.

Anonymous said...

It was done before 2002. It can be done again. Re-opening a few schools is probably necessary. I believe they closed some to be able to say it was impossible. At the very least, have a radius preference like the first proposaol back in 2002, so that the people who have to travel maybe go 2 miles, not 8 like some do now. You could do that and better by expanding popular schools and re-opening a few key schools. They almost closed Sutru 2 years ago, which would have made it worse. When they can force kids into schools that are low API, they can say look, we turned around Mission, we turned around Balboa. In reality, you turned around Jack Squat, superior Asian educational culture and parenting practices turned those schools around. It could have never happened with white people because they'll leave if they don't get their way, but Asians, some Russians, they deal with it so they can be close to their language, shopping, religion and culture, and they still study hard, so it looks like they've turned schools around when in reality, the black and Latino students at those schools, while there are a lower percentage and the incidences of violent crime are down, are scoring no higher on tests than they did 20-30 years ago, and have just as depressing a future. They haven't closed the achievement gap because they aren't asking the right questions, the questions Geoffrey Canada or Obama would ask.

Unknown said...

AB, thanks for posting that info.

Unfortunately, the other poster, to whom I will have to assign a name like I did with Phooey, seems to have misconstrued it. Apparently he thinks that Drew, for example, is at 310% capacity. Not sure how he can think that, rather than understand that the neighborhood zone has 310% of kids versus seats at the school. But so it is. Hard to carry on a conversation with him making these erroneous remarks.



AB said...

My pleasure Don, I appreciate being able to come to your blog to get info on many education related topics.

I like the idea of assigning handles, it helps separate one anon from another. I chose the first two letters of the alphabet, not very creative, but neither is my writing - just a bunch of boring facts and data that pokes holes in progressive agendas. ;)

to 1:42 - When you make sweeping generalized statements about a group of people (you covered Asians, Russians, Hispanics and Blacks in your last post) I tend not to give much credence to what you are trying to say. Not that race isn't important, but when you make sweeping stereotyped statements in place of culturally relevant insights or factual data I have difficulty finding or following the argument. Phooey does this all too frequently, I doubt you want to be in the same category.

When I look at CTIP1 data, graduation/dropout data, achievement data, suspension and truancy data, etc. I see the same data everyone sees, and yes I see there tends be a preponderance of certain racial/ethnic groups at the wrong end of the spectrum. I fully believe the District has a responsibility to help these kids I just don't see any evidence that diversity programs have or will have a material positive impact. I believe the District is trying to resolve the wrong trait (race) when it should be focused on identity and remediation of the traits that can be changed (study time, resources, etc.).

Anonymous said...

Don, I understand about Drew, there are over 3 times the number of kids in the area vs. how many are accepted. For Drew, it'd be impossible. For Alamo, at 130, considering some will want language immersion or Rooftop or something else and some will move, I think you could expand it to what it was 10 years ago and eliminate the middle class white/Asian transfers using the switch algorithm trick, and you'd have enough space. Like I say, you could at least get everyone within a zone or two of home right away, then ultimately create zones again. How did they do it before 2002? That is the question.

Anonymous said...

AB, I agree, they could do far more focusing on study time, resources, parenting, tutoring both in terms of making it available and in terms of convincing parents/kids to sign up for what's available, etc. Even at Lowell, one of the best high schools in the country, they have tutoring available that sometimes goes unused, so you can imagine the challenge in getting this resource used at struggling schools, but it should be a major goal of every PTA and Principal. You're on the right track. I know not all charter schools are successful but some of the schools with the highest black test score averages in the nation are virtually all black, in Harlem/Bronx and several other Cities, including a couple in Florida.

Unknown said...

2:25 needs a moniker so I've arrived at "Factoid".

Factoid, you said, "you know as well as I that Alamo very recently was 17% bigger and we have 22 in a classroom from grades K-3 and 12 years ago had 29-30."

I don't know that because it's completely false. In 1989 they passed the Class Size Reduction Act which levied large penalties on schools that participated in the act (received the money) but failed to follow the size guidelines. Almost all schools participated. Since that time K-3 until 2009 class size was capped at 20.4 per class. Your kids have been in school before 2009 when they relaxed the penalties to compensate for the reductions in district apportionments as a result of the Great Recession.. You must remember that classes had 20 kids, not almost 30, prior to that. Class sizes go up to those levels and higher in 4 and 5th, but Alamo privately funded 28-30 to lower it from 36, the district max, though they illegally used the LEP money as well. After 2009 the district increased the K-3 level to 23 or 24 like it is now. Still not remembering?

To respond to the other part of your false statement, Alamo used to have 730 or so students in 2004. Now it has about 530. The whole inside of the building was remodeled during the ADA upgrade in part to make fewer classrooms. To go back to 740 would require another remodel at huge expense.

As for accommodating SE neighborhood schools, the current undercapacity could only be resolved through a large infrastructure investment. I'm sure SFUSD closed and downsized in the SE to require students to gout of the district, but they complain like heck when banks and supermarkets do the same.

Factoid, you have a remarkably poor recollection of events. get your facts straight.

Anonymous said...

All I mean is if there's a will there's a way. There are always temporary classrooms. There are a couple classrooms which were turned into extra rooms. They're empty. You could pick up ten immigrants on Folsom and in 5 hours they could turn it back into a classroom. This isn't rocket science. Bureaucracies always make easy things so difficult. Give me a break! SFUSD would probably require 7 environmental impact studies, a new paint job, a raised ceiling, and union construction firms to move the chairs and desks back in. The modern state of affairs has become so bureaucratic it's ridiculous. It's almost like the Soviet Union. And these are the facts. And they are undisputed. Factoid.

Unknown said...

I certainly agree that it is hard to get anything done, but you can't be serious about picking up some immigrants on Folsom to to rewire electrical and construct new walls for your children. There are such things as building codes, fire codes, union rules and state ed code. But no matter. Those are not facts and they are disputable according to Factoid. Have you been drinking?

Please, there is such a thing as reality, though you do make me wonder. And stop it with the constant refrain - these are the facts and they are indisputable. You are the last person who's qualified to use that phrase.
Your blatant disregard for facts has been exposed repeatedly. You're wasting our time. Take a breather and ponder.

Anonymous said...

I'm exaggerating but there's no way they need to turn $1,000 jobs into $20,000 jobs. The amount of bureaucracy involved in doing anything with the government is ridiculous. The rooms were classrooms and now they are lounges, making them a classroom again would cost no more than a thousand dollars, it could be done by volunteers.

Anonymous said...

In any mixed-conditional syllogism-mixed because it contains a categorical and conditional proposition-the conclusion confirms the consequent. We gather from our exchanges some interesting and additional information upon this matter. Logistical and bureaucratic restrictions of this sort can be problematic in that they can be intentional or symptomatic, and can be utilized in their entirety for the preponderance of suppositions which may or may not have ulterior motives. We can't and we won't are never far apart, and we can't is more often a statement of mellifluous and mendacious intent than it's corresponding logistical sibling, I wish I could, but this is unfortunately not my jurisdiction. It is difficult to isolate such regulations as a direct cause of student achievement. The victors must not set themselves deliberately in the opposition of any new initiative which it is in their ultimate interests to malign. Do these nefarious machinations still live vividly in the imaginations and institutions of men because they have the ultimate power to forestall progress at it's very root? Perceptions of our worth have shifted and perhaps we ought to be importing educational systems and ideas rather than ordering every other nation to be more like us whether they like it or not. Our fears, our acts, may still be disconnected, as children's are. Matt Haney may be a pawn in a much larger game. We may never know! Or we may very soon. One cannot predict. Might we be on the precipice of a change in policy in which the union will not admit it has changed, but present it merely as an innovation? Or are there other factors at work? Real estate interests? Rose Pak? Could the people longing to humiliate Ross Mirkarimi want to know with certainty where their children will go to school? Could they be so bold? Could these reflect elaborate kinship systems or could we be rebuilding what has not so long ago been dismantled? One might begin to think of the chief stars as persons, very shining and dignified and trustworthy, very individualized and personal, but perhaps every rebel truly has it's master. Perhaps no one is truly independent.

Anonymous said...

I'm a little confused by this. Are you saying you are for or against neighborhood schools? Are you saying corporate interests are pushing a behind-the-schenes move to change our student assignment policy? You make some great points but you could try being a little more direct. Factoid.

Anonymous said...

Oh shut up both of you.

Unknown said...

5:51 Only Factoid is buying it. I asked you before to make a clear statement. If you can't it's because you have nothing to say and instead hide behind a wall of words, most of which makes no sense at all. Yes, I know. It isn't supposed to make sense because you're just putting us on. Nothing better to do?

"In any mixed-conditional syllogism-mixed because it contains a categorical and conditional proposition-the conclusion confirms the consequent."

Please.

Anonymous said...

You know black people hate it when white people try to act superior by using a bunch of big words no one knows or ever uses. In English, there are 20 words for every one. White people make the SAT racist because the richer they are, the more of these words they use. You act like you are so smart but if I translate your weird/haughty words for regular words, it hardly makes any sense at all. So you know how to use a thesaurus, yippedy doo dah. Go celebrate at your white supremacist we know weird words no one uses party. Just say what you mean don't show off that you memorized a bunch of useless words. It's racist. Phooey.

Anonymous said...

Big deal we all have google. Why don't you just explain what your opinion is on the matter and why. I hope you're wrong if Factoid's interpretation is correct. Phooey.

syl·lo·gism
/ˈsiləˌjizəm/
noun
noun: syllogism; plural noun: syllogisms1. an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions (premises), each of which shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a common or middle term not present in the conclusion (e.g., all dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs ).

Anonymous said...

Nothing is racist about being intelligent. So we have to think a little. If all kids spent more time thinking and studying there would be no achievement gap and we wouldn't be under pressure from extreme leftists to not let people go to their neighborhood school and end up being driven out of the system.

With all due respect and in full acknowledgement and appreciation of your vastly superior intellect, I appreciate your deep thoughts and complicated, intelligent and philosophical writing, but I would appreciate a translation to standard English or a basic summary of what your point is and what you believe. Your writing is beautiful and thoughtful and I find myself reading and re-reading it many times but I'm embarrassed to say I take out a notebook and try to map it out and understand exactly what you mean and there are sentences and parts I am unfortunately unable to follow.

You are probably a member of MENSA or a graduate of Harvard or something but if you could, keep in mind the rest of us may not have your level of educational attainment. This seems to me to be an Exeter/Oxford/Skull and Crossbones/MIT type level of language and not everyone on this blog is from that kind of exalted background. I try to read a lot and I did get my thesaurus out and make an effort to understand everything you said but I'm embarrassed to say I still am not 100% sure of your point, as happened when you posted before. I greatly admire you and apologize for any inconvenience, but honestly you confuse me. You probably generally post on more highbrow intellectual blogs for professors or geniuses but some of us went to Cal and are pretty well educated and are still confused by what you write. If it alienates the majority of people, maybe it could make the point better in standard English, as you're trying to convince regular San Francisco parents of your point of view, not the Ivy League MENSA debate club gathering or the Audubon Society or Daughters of the Revolution.

Can you please put it into a basic summary? I'm sure you're right and your point is well-backed and thoughtful, I just want to completely understand it. Please?

My guess is that you're saying power interests are making phone calls behind the scenes and saying, it's a new San Francisco, real estate is going up, new companies are being started, more money is coming in, we don't want a policy which will mean high income tech. workers will move out once their kids get older and lower property values and maybe take some of the investment and jobs with them to the suburbs, the schools aren't integrating as a result of this policy due to factors beyond our control, and it quite simply isn't worth the damage this policy causes. We know you don't wish to admit defeat, but is there a subtle way we can reverse course on this one issue discreetly and quietly? And in effect, you are saying that the board, which may seem independent, nevertheless answers to higher powers.

Is this more or less it?

Factoid.

Unknown said...

Factoid, the point of the post is to expose you as a fool and he's succeeding. It stretches the imagination that you fell for it a second time.

Most intelligent people understand the basics of grammar and syntax. You can't recognize a hoax?

Anonymous said...

Don, this person's clearly operating at a higher level than any of us. I read it carefully and it makes sense. They're probably just used to talking to top level people intelligence-wise. Please try to translate if possible. No one understood many geniuses in their time. I don't believe it's a hoax and I believe you have a point. Don, everything follows logically if you use a thesaurus and map it out. Did you ever study formal logic? I had forgotten what syllogisms are but it makes sense now. I think he's just talking about the logic to reach our conclusion.

Anonymous said...

Since you people are so dense I'll translate it for you. You lot take the joy out of writing.

The proposition that Matt Haney is the one to admit he was errant or the viewpoint that a lottery will solve segregation is errant, needs evidence to be confirmed but is quite plausible and deserves consideration. I was then complementing you on adding interesting information and stating that when government makes things 10 times as difficult and arduous as logically necessary and people such as Don are thusly hoodwinked it and give every justification for bureaucracy and regulation, one gives the government a tremendous amount of power to delay or in some cases, never do certain things which would be expedient. In a nutshell, they can't win one way so they attempt to win another. It's no different from the mendacious slander they spread about your measure, which I voted for coincidentally. I feel they should not stop progress, but they do, as in the abominable and ludicrous employment conditions of low pay and impregnable job security or certainty. We look at it like children and don't see the bigger picture. Ed Lee and his cohorts are taking over, and their interests are with certainty for the affluent. However, the impoverished and maligned people themselves do not seem to wish for this lottery. It seems a tool of the high income individuals of the neighborhoods without the best schools, and these people have lost much power of late. Many of the socialist lot are also for neighborhood schools, Olague, Mirkarimi. It cannot last as such. But to admit defeat to the likes of you lot could embolden other populist movements, which is to be avoided at all costs. Many of these socialist lot who once seemed so unified by ideology are now answering to big business, as seen in the 8 Washington debacle. If those at the top so desire, it will happen. It is not so much for them as their employees. There is a lot of money to be made from this. Always follow the money.
I will try to tamper down my comments in the future. American education does not allow for truly intelligent writing.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for adding to our blog. I agree with your opinions and hope your analysis is right. I do tend to think Haney would check with his colleagues and the union and Garcia before saying anything to the Examiner or Chronicle which contradicts their viewpoint, but if they needed a point man he'd be perfect as he had no official viewpoint on this issue, though everyone knows he was against H and for the Lottery. I think maybe he noticed it was actually causing more and not less segregation. Please don't be discouraged. I don't understand everything you write but wish I'd received the type of education which would have enabled me to do so and welcome the opportunity to take my time and try to understand your thoughts on this subject. Why are you so interested in this issue? Do you have kids in public schools in San Francisco or is this just theoretical for you?

Anonymous said...

Not Garcia, the new guy, Carranza.

Anonymous said...

How many words are there in your thesaurus for racist? For isolation? Snobbery? Indifference? Apathy? NIMBY? Maybe you could find a way to say you're a racist snob who wants segregation in some grandiose language none of us can understand and then pat yourself on the back and criticize black people for not speaking the same way you do. That would just be lovely. Merry Christmas. So wonderful. You're such a hero! And you're wrong about the board. They'll never, ever agree with anyone like you. Phooey.

Anonymous said...

A paucity of political intellectualism manifests itself in the persistence of the unicameral deliberative body. Contemporary boards of education, beset as they are by a strident political monotheism, divest iconoclastic thought as the bombast of the radical. Polemics of this sort reveal the true progenitors of formative political change as the antithesis of modern monolithic political materialism. Haney has countered the illegitimacy of institutionalized social justice, known more colloquially as "knee-jerk liberalism", with a rationalism unlike any seen on this committee in recent years. Will he rise the new hero of a realigned and more pragmatic neo-neoliberalism? The possible answer is a question buried deep in the psyches of the individual members.
Will our educational authoritarians redouble their efforts to constrain the forces crumbling their utopian edifice or is it too late to rally the forces of faltering modern neoliberalism? Will the rational response prevail or will a mendacious board derail into paroxysms institutional reactionism? Does Carranza and his neophyte administration have the acumen of experience to ride the bandwagon of righteousness and acquiesce to rationalism or will he cling to the continued obfuscation of data buried beneath the ramparts of his establishment's pseudo-authenticity? If Haney can parley the data of failure as an evolutionary prostheses, he just might convince our illegitimate leaders to get out of the way of the march of progress to save their own hides.

Anonymous said...

Translation? I thought you were going to speak down to us plebeians.

Anonymous said...

A frequent lurker, this exchange has found me compelled me to comment.

Coming across this blog one day by chance I was pleasantly surprised to discover a place online where moderation was encouraged and extremes tolerated. This was too good to be true in this city of one-sided political discourse.

I give Don credit for calling out the District in so many ways. I do not hold myself up as you do, Mr.Smartypants, to be the arbiter of reason but as far as I'm able to tell Don is a steady and informed voice. So it came as a surprise when you said he is hoodwinked to believe in bureaucracy and regulation. My opinion is very much the opposite. If I had to guess I'd say Don Krause wants to expose the school district as a fraud and succeeded admirably.

Therefore I have arrived at the conclusion that you, a person disinclined to remain quiet as I have until now, don't follow this blog and don't know the moderator's positions. Don't take it from me but you would be well advised to follow a logical course of inquiry and investigation before you pass judgment on the people who like this blog. We may not share your proclivity to pontificate, but we know when we smell a rat.

Anonymous said...

For all you lovers of words, pardon my transgressions.

Anonymous said...

5:44, well stated, I agree with you and hope you are right.

Anonymous said...

With what do you agree?

Do you understand what 5:44 said or are you just pretending?

Prosthetics at 1:11 refers to "you people" as being dense. We are not one. There are several of us who comment. Translate "you people" as "writer sees himself or herself superior to all other anonymous people be virtue of superior intellect."

I shudder to see the processes at work, real or imagined.

AB said...

A few words of wisdom for our Anonymous sesquipedalian:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
- George Eliot

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
- Thomas Jefferson

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.
- Winston Churchill

Anonymous said...

Time to turn up moderation.

Anonymous said...

Smartypants,

You take a lot of the joy out of reading.



Anonymous said...

Leonardo Da Vinci was a misogynist woman beater. Thomas Jefferson was a racist rapist. Winston Churchill tried to keep India a colony and nearly caused the death of Mahatma Gandhi. Einstein invented the worst weapon ever known to man which murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, including children. You sure have some strange heroes. Phooey!

Anonymous said...

Score one for Smartypants. Loquacity has never been a bad thing. This poster is clearly operating at a higher level than any of us and we would do well to show respect and try to learn from their wisdom. Factoid.

Anonymous said...

I meant score one for Phooey!

Anonymous said...

Smartypants,

Your comment at @ 5:44 was sheer brillaince, but 1:11 before it left a lot to be desired. I read it over three times and it makes no sense. There is confirmation of the failure to solve segregation by lottery. Where you bin, sucka? Strike 1. We want our fuckin' 'hood schools, Charlesworth.

You talk shit of wages and bureaucracy. Big zero on the revelation, son of God. Everyone knows bureaucracy is tantamount to WFA and wages are too low? Oh spare me the funny bone treatment. You can see right through society's little games. Strike 2. You're killing me with brilliance!

You swung hard for the homerun but struck out on the next pitch.
Your finish is no revelation, Socrates. Socialists answering to big business. Obama wasn't elected yesterday, Sherlock! What happened, fresh out of snappy phraseology? It's getting cold under there.

"If those at the top so desire it will happen." Where are you taking your cues, Field of Dreams?

The emperor has no clothes. Send your MENSA membership card back, Homer!

Anonymous said...

5:44 and 1:11 are clearly not the same person. One is imitating the other as a joke. 1:11 was Smartypants.

Anonymous said...

Let's just remember on this day that Jesus lived poor and sacrificed to help the poor though he could have easily been very rich with his amazing abilities. He was incorruptible. He did not take all he could. He took very little. Christmas is a day for the rich to help the poor, for the well off to think about whether it is fair just to care about their child and perpetuate inequality rather than help poor children as well and try to solve these problems for all, rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged, black, white, brown, yellow and red, people who want to be doctors and people who would rather be janitors or busboys or waitresses but not feel pressure to kiss up to arrogant customers who look down on them and be able to be themselves like in Europe. We want good and bad students, smart and dumb, industrious and laid back, to all have a right to healthcare, shelter, nourishment, entertainment, dignity and respect. Jesus cared more about the poor than about his ego or himself. He loved all people equally. He did not favor anyone, his mom, his friends, no one. He was fair and loving and just and kind and he was a liberal Jewish hippy who didn't fit in. He was born today. We should strive to be more like him, not selfishly obsessed with our own problems. Let's find solutions for everyone. There is enough wealth to go around if we can not be greedy. Jesus was very much against greed. We should follow Pope Francis and redistribute fairly and with love and an open heart. We should love Jesus on Christmas. We should love all his children. Phooey.

Anonymous said...

Tampered down yet again for you lot, Haney will convince the Board to increase the neighborhood influence on assignment only if board members can avoid the specter of retreat and the political fallout of capitulation. Is that easy enough to understand or would you like me to break it down more? From the moment the redesign was law, the nefarious machinations implicit in real estate reflected the assignment process. Backing down would result in financial losses and Ed Lee and his wealthy interests will not approve.

Do you morons remember when the experts recommended more neighborhood preference on the redesign process? They didn't get it. Left-wing ideology trumped research and data. Do you people understand that? Where exists the incentive for change? Why should members capitulate to the likes of you and risk a left wing backlash and a populist insurgency?

Now do you understand? No? Haney will fail and you witless neighborhood schools people will lose yet again.

Anonymous said...

MerryfrickinChristmas Smartypants!!!!

Anonymous said...

Aren't you mixing up Jesus Christ with Robin Hood? Jesus would not approve of stealing for redistribution of wealth.

Anonymous said...

Jesus would not have approved of anyone getting that rich in the first place while they have employees on low wages. If they believed in Jesus really we wouldn't have this inequality. Redistribution will only put it back where it should already be. Remember the money changers? Phooey.

Unknown said...

If there is no generation of wealth, there can be no generation of jobs. If there's no generation of jobs, there's no economy, no taxes, no government or civilized society.

No one can doubt that Jesus would not have condoned greed. But he was also no enemy of the wealthy either, having been known to have many rich friends. I'm no religious man or scholar of Christianity, but I suspect Christ has more going on than in your small world of class consciousness, Phooey.

The citation - Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's - is often considered a consent to taxation, but it has also been interpreted as a consent to the secular affairs of man.

Redistribution of wealth is just another way of expropriating freedom. There are people who believe in freedom and others who think only of jobs, equality and security.

Anonymous said...

I think anyone with basic morals wouldn't have billions in the bank, buy a company, fire tens of thousands of Americans, and delight in it, brag about it, and then re-hire much of the same work for a fraction of the cost in India, all while making record profits. Maybe after 25 million, you could think, I have enough, what about my workers, what about others? There's no self-restraint. Jesus believed in security, equality, and jobs. No individual could get as obscenely rich back then. Plus there was no racism. Phooey.

Anonymous said...

Nobody thinks about anybody but themselves anymore. My neighbors threw beer cans all over my front porch. The Sunset used to be a nice neighborhood full of families. Merry Fucking Christmas. Assholes! Larry Ellison is no worse, and no better, than these thugs. Everyone is completely materialistic and selfish these days. We should have known as we rejected Jesus we would end up dying a little each day until people thought it was OK to have billions while others starved and slept in doorways. No one has any morals anymore. The bible says you shouldn't spend money unless you can go 40 doors one way and 40 another without anyone starving. Now people just live in rich areas, but people are starving. No one should have ever let their net worth get over a billion with people starving what the hell is the point? Greed used to be considered one of the seven deadly sins. Now thanks to Michael Douglas, it's celebrated!

Unknown said...

Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

Benjamin Franklin

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams

Phooey, your comment about no racism in ancient times is historically inaccurate by a mile. Your views require that you wear blinders.

Anonymous said...

Don, why not delete these comments?

Unknown said...

The comments by Smartypants are vague and uninspired. The follower that is impressed by them has admitted that he doesn't know what they mean, though he's impressed anyway. No one knows what they mean because they don't mean anything.

Some people are impressed by outward manifestations, even when they are designed to hide a moribund inner failing. Worse yet, Smartypants was caught with his pants down and what did he do? Insult the rest of us. We are all morons because we fail to understand his higher intellectual plane. Sad and pathetic and more so that some people are snookered by it.

Also, Einstein did not invent the atomic bomb and had very little to do with it's development with the exception of one small project and the letter he wrote to FDR.

Jefferson was a man if his times and one of the largest landowners. His early efforts ultimately led to the abolishment of slavery.

Churchill did not invent colonialism and can hardly be blamed for not ending it.

DaVinci's personal life is a matter of some conjecture. He definitely had issues with women from an early age, but there's little evidence he was a woman beater.

Anonymous said...

My point is you didn't need to restrict anyone's freedom because nobody tried to amass that sort of wealth, people had self restraint, self control, for the greater good. As for racism, at first there were white and black slaves, then they turned it racist, and no one was born a slave. That was a new thing, people being born property. Even in Africa no one was born property. Othello married a princess in Italy in the 1800s. Now a black man can't walk around the Italian parts of Brookly and Staten Island without being chased by 20 boys with baseball bats and killed. Black women are still raped by white men constantly, not to mention all the men killed by police. In ancient times, people judged people as individuals and you could make money off the fruits of the land so racism was irrelevant. Why did whites get homesteads but blacks never got their homesteads, their 40 acres and a mule? Phooey.

Unknown said...


From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery PBS

We sometimes imagine that such oppressive laws were put quickly into full force by greedy landowners. But that's not the way slavery was established in colonial America. It happened gradually -- one person at a time, one law at a time, even one colony at a time.

All servants imported and brought into the Country. . . who were not Christians in their native Country. . . shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion. . . shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master. . . correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction. . . the master shall be free of all punishment. . . as if such accident never happened.

- Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705


One of the places we have the clearest views of that "terrible transformation" is the colony of Virginia. In the early years of the colony, many Africans and poor whites -- most of the laborers came from the English working class -- stood on the same ground. Black and white women worked side-by-side in the fields. Black and white men who broke their servant contract were equally punished.
• Arrival of first Africans to Virginia Colony
• Africans in court

Anthony Johnson was a free black man who owned property in Virginia
All were indentured servants. During their time as servants, they were fed and housed. Afterwards, they would be given what were known as "freedom dues," which usually included a piece of land and supplies, including a gun. Black-skinned or white-skinned, they became free.
Historically, the English only enslaved non-Christians, and not, in particular, Africans. And the status of slave (Europeans had African slaves prior to the colonization of the Americas) was not one that was life-long. A slave could become free by converting to Christianity. The first Virginia colonists did not even think of themselves as "white" or use that word to describe themselves. They saw themselves as Christians or Englishmen, or in terms of their social class. They were nobility, gentry, artisans, or servants.


One of the few recorded histories of an African in America that we can glean from early court records is that of "Antonio the negro," as he was named in the 1625 Virginia census. He was brought to the colony in 1621. At this time, English and Colonial law did not define racial slavery; the census calls him not a slave but a "servant." Later, Antonio changed his name to Anthony Johnson, married an African American servant named Mary, and they had four children. Mary and Anthony also became free, and he soon owned land and cattle and even indentured servants of his own. By 1650, Anthony was still one of only 400 Africans in the colony among nearly 19,000 settlers. In Johnson's own county, at least 20 African men and women were free, and 13 owned their own homes.

In 1640, the year Johnson purchased his first property, three servants fled a Virginia plantation. Caught and returned to their owner, two had their servitude extended four years. However, the third, a black man named John Punch, was sentenced to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life." He was made a slave.
• Virginia recognizes slavery
• Virginia slave codes
• Colonial laws

Traditionally, Englishmen believed they had a right to enslave a non-Christian or a captive taken in a just war. Africans and Indians might fit one or both of these definitions. But what if they learned English and converted to the Protestant church? Should they be released from bondage and given "freedom dues?" What if, on the other hand, status were determined not by (changeable ) religious faith but by (unchangeable) skin color?
• Virginia looks toward
Africa for labor


In 1670 Virginia seized Johnson's land...

Unknown said...


This disorder that the indentured servant system had created made racial slavery to southern slaveholders much more attractive, because what were black slaves now? Well, they were a permanent dependent labor force, who could be defined as a people set apart. They were racially set apart. They were outsiders. They were strangers and in many ways throughout the world, slavery has taken root, especially where people are considered outsiders and can be put in a permanent status of slavery.

- David Blight, historian

Also, the indentured servants, especially once freed, began to pose a threat to the property-owning elite. The colonial establishment had placed restrictions on available lands, creating unrest among newly freed indentured servants. In 1676, working class men burned down Jamestown, making indentured servitude look even less attractive to Virginia leaders. Also, servants moved on, forcing a need for costly replacements; slaves, especially ones you could identify by skin color, could not move on and become free competitors.



In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to legally recognize slavery. Other states, such as Virginia, followed. In 1662, Virginia decided all children born in the colony to a slave mother would be enslaved. Slavery was not only a life-long condition; now it could be passed, like skin color, from generation to generation.

In 1665, Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland and leased a 300-acre plantation, where he died five years later. But back in Virginia that same year, a jury decided the land Johnson left behind could be seized by the government because he was a "negroe and by consequence an alien." In 1705 Virginia declared that "All servants imported and brought in this County... who were not Christians in their Native Country... shall be slaves. A Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves ... shall be held to be real estate."
• Court document regarding Anthony Johnson

• Royal African Company established
English suppliers responded to the increasing demand for slaves. In 1672, England officially got into the slave trade as the King of England chartered the Royal African Company, encouraging it to expand the British slave trade. In 1698, the English Parliament ruled that any British subject could trade in slaves. Over the first 50 years of the 18th century, the number of Africans brought to British colonies on British ships rose from 5,000 to 45,000 a year. England had passed Portugal and Spain as the number one trafficker of slaves in the world