Harris vs. Biden equals two flops

[Galraedia]

Polls said Harris bounced up and Biden slid down as the public reacted to what was considered the most dramatic event in the worrisome jibber-jabber of wannabe presidents. After the week’s final show was done, Harris’s staff said she favored returning the nation to busing. It would not hurt if she studied some additional polls, these taken when busing was going on. Neither whites nor blacks liked children being told to leave their schools for a ride to a place where they often felt lost and bothered to little educational avail.

Back in the days of busy busing, I had friends who moved into a house they could barely afford in a well-to-do suburb near Louisville, Ky. The purpose was for their children to go to some of the most highly ranked schools in the area. Then they learned their kids would spend a long time every day going back and forth to schools among the lowest ranked in the area. These people are not racists. They have spent years trying to help black people, but they did not like being ordered about by a federal government unconstitutionally deciding that skin color was basis enough to wreck their best laid plans for loved ones.

Busing didn’t work. People moved out of cities where they were subject to its familial intrusions, and more and more sent their children to private schools. Just as Biden was sneakily portrayed as a racist, they were called racists, but surveys suggest otherwise. Largely because so many whites and blacks still live in different neighborhoods, schools are not well-integrated, but all kinds of rescues, such as charter schools, have been devised. Going back to busing would mean our society had shamefully been fooled not just once, but twice.

Read more: https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/ambrose-harris-biden-2020-election-1.33334243

[Thekaspervote]

1. Great post.. thx!!

[Demovictory9]

2. California created "magnet schools" in the late 70s. They still exist. specialty schools (Science,

arts/theater) to attract diverse student body to the same school.

[Chitown Kev]

4. California wasn't the only place

After the Milliken v. Bradley decision, Detroit opened up a couple of magnet schools in addition to the two that they already had...I graduated from one of those newer magnet schools.

[mopinko]

7. chicago did too. the system is pretty open now. we still bus kids but

we entered into a consent decree to open up choices. we started w a few magnets for gifted kids, but now there are lots of options to cross attendance boundaries for special programs of all sorts. most of those kids can get a bus.
there are other options where parents have to get them there, and they do.
lots of good charters. hate on, but we do them right here, and choice is not an empty promise. i live around the corner from an open enrollment charter that is on the usnews list.

by high school, kids can take public transit, which is subsidized. there is a ton of choice at that level now.

i raised 5 kids in chi starting in '81, to '11.
went through every part of the system, and a lot outside it.

as it has evolved, i think a lot of good has come of it.
the idea of 'one size fits all' has been killed, and the boundaries are more and more porous.
my oldest rode a bus, and i didnt want the younger kids to do that, but if that was my only option, i would have.
youngest took the train downtown for 4 years, tho. a little over an hour each way.

i would like to see suburban districts have to open up their boundaries. there are plenty of folk who would like to have a legal route in, instead of lying about their addresses and ending up doing 10x the time that the rich folk got for bribing people to get their kids into yale.

it is still an issue, imho, and the proper role of the feds is an issue, too.
schools are still segregated.

[Chitown Kev]

8. I know people that do that...I live in Evanston

I know that some people move to Evanston specifically for the schools here...which are pretty diverse (but Evanston is a pretty diverse town, too...although there are some remnants of segregation here

[mopinko]

9. eth has a real problem, from what i know.

they are sort of the poster child for- just because they all go to the same building doesnt mean they get the same education.

for the increased property taxes you could send kids to a lot of private schools. never made sense to me.

i actually knew someone who used a grandparent's address to go to a city school cuz he had a special needs kid.

[Chitown Kev]

10. That's true, too...

Even when I was in high school in Detroit, I used to wonder whether the whole magnet school thing contributed to the problem as well...

[mopinko]

11. i think all in all, it contributed to the solution, but also delayed it.

half measures and temperate allies. and years later, little changed.

[Hoyt]

3. What worked was that localities were allowed to drag their feet. Biden played a part. eom

[pnwmom]

5. The busing in Berkeley worked. They have adjusted their plan over the decades,

but they are still busing children in order to achieve a better balance in socio-economic and racial integration. Now they bus by micro-neighborhoods (more than 450 of them), rather than by individual children. So children within a few blocks of each other all go to the same school, but each school (whether located in the "flats" or in the affluent hills) draws from a wide variety of micro-neighborhoods. The end result though is far more balanced than in the pre-busing era.

And, unlike in the years when Kamala went to school, the resources across the district have been evenly divided.

[sop]

6. Busing led to things like school choice, school vouchers, home schooling, charter schools...

Being told where your children had to attend school resulted in a series of alternatives for parents who rejected what they felt was government intrusion and overreach. These options also created the illusion parents could get their kids out of failing schools instead of resorting to busing. Such programs diverted limited funds available to public schools, making bad schools worse, and created another form of segregation.

[YOHABLO]

12. Busing may have seemed the right thing to do back then, but equal opportunity goes much further.

Busing was a bandaid on a bigger social economic problem: children living in an environment that's not conducive to learning. You can bus kids all over the place, but unlike Kamala, who happened to be from two highly educated parents, many children are of low economic means and go home to stressful situations. We need to educate parents as well as their children.