Jackson Free Press

AP is reporting that Texas Republicans want Congress to allow them to put Katrina evacuees into separate schools:

It started with a can of Sprite. Last week, a local student at Jesse H. Jones High School in Houston threw his soft drink at some of the new kids, those recently enrolled teenagers who had fled Hurricane Katrina. The students from New Orleans fought back, sparking a schoolyard brawl that sent three students to the hospital for facial and rib injuries. By the time the dust-up cleared, police had arrested five students, three from Houston and two from New Orleans.

The fight was the exception, not the rule. Over the past two weeks, Texas education officials have enrolled more than 40,000 displaced students, almost all of them from the New Orleans region. New teachers have been hired, new textbooks ordered and entire school buildings taken out of mothballs. Like other states, Texas has integrated the Katrina victims into its schools, following strict federal guidelines that bar local school districts from educating homeless students separately from the general population or stigmatizing them with special identification cards or wristbands.

But on Capitol Hill, the Jones High School fight has been used to justify an effort by the Department of Education and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, to waive those federal rules.

Previous Comments

ID

171716

Comment

The feds are using Katrina to push for private school vouchers. So, why not separate but equal schools to go with it?

Author

Rex

Date

2005-09-20T14:27:08-06:00

ID

171717

Comment

You're right, Rex, it is the next logical step for anyone who thinks believes in the Social Darwinist approach of school vouchers. They should make sure to put separate water fountains within those schools, and perhaps brand the young people with the word "evacuee" while they're at. Or perhaps armbands would suffice. I will wonder how all those folks in private schools are going to deal with the fact that national testing would have to apply to them as well if public-school vouchers are used in their schools. Or, who's going to pay to educate the students who aren't allowed into the private schools. Oh, you say, with vouchers they will HAVE to accept all students, being that it's public money. I wonder if all the private-school parents realize that, another might respond. Another says: The students who are rejected don't want education any wayówe need janitors and maids, after all. One might call the idea of vouchers the "shock and awe" joke of the month. Uh, it's one of those "good" ideas that won't work in practice, guys. I am so just seeing the doors of all of Mississippi's segregation academics suddenly flinging open because students they didn't used to want suddenly have a voucher in their hand. Even Gov. Barbour knows that won't work in this state. And you can't "test" vouchers' efficacy without making them applicable to all public schoolsówhich is unconstitutional (and should be). One of the huge problems with the idea is what to do with the kids that the private sector does not, or refuses to, educate. It's just one more way to widen that gapóand that will hurt every single one of us. Think. It. Through. Folks. The White House sure won't.

Author

ladd

Date

2005-09-20T15:40:18-06:00

ID

171718

Comment

Let's put it this way: You want to send your kids to private schools, fine, pay for it and do it. But your tax dollars, which are meant to help the public good of us all, cannot flow with you into those private schools, thus further breaking down an instituation that serves the public good by injecting Social Darwinist tactics into it, and ensuring that the "best" students all go to school together where they can all forget about the "rest" of the world out that that no one wants to educate. It's an idiotic idea because it won't work, and it's an immoral idea because it is designed to undercut those in our society who need help the most. Kind of like "No Child Left Behind."

Author

ladd

Date

2005-09-20T15:44:21-06:00