[Cin]

To me it makes perfect sense to hold students of public schools to the same standards as those attending private or religious schools. So right now that can be defined as students who meet all other requirements, the ones that will get a private school student a diploma, should also get a diploma and an MCAS diploma should be given to those who pass the MCAS test. Though this is really just a band-aid. To me the real value in these tests is they will tell us exactly how well we are actually educating our youth. I guess we have the answer to that. Effort needs to be made to educate young people so that all kids can pass standard tests across the country.

I suppose that’s pie in the sky stuff, but seriously if we can accomplish all the phenomenally impressive stuff we manage like making the world’s tiniest laser, 1000 times smaller than the width of a hair, just 44 nanometers across, hell if we can measure in nanometers, if we can discover that sticky tape can produce x-rays, if we can figure out that a black hole (the one true flying spaghetti monster god) eats planets turning them into it’s own special kind of pasta, if we can discover an enzyme that can convert any type of blood into type O, and on and on, why can’t we find a way to educate our youth. I mean how hard is that compared to cloning rhesus monkeys? We can destroy the financial stability of the world with unique and infinitely complicated financial weapons of mass destruction. If the minds that can come up with a demonic piece of work like derivatives would, just for a little while, focus on doing good, I have to believe they could come up with a plan to actually educate our youth.

Not that I am saying the scientific or financial communities should be responsible for improving education. What I am saying is that we are incredibly innovative and amazingly creative in a myriad of ways. Let’s make one of those ways that we are incredibly innovative and creative about finding ideas that work to educate our youth. MCATS tell us that we are not all that successful, but they don’t tell us how to get successful. And without leveling the playing field, once again it is those people least able to handle any more on their plate, who take the hit.

Poor urban youth are the victims of this type of inequity. And really don’t they have enough inequity already? I use poor as the operative word, although I have no doubt the largest percentage of the kids affected are minorities. The causality or common link for most is, I believe, a lack of money. People who have enough money can send their kids to a private school.

I am from Massachusetts and had first hand experience as a poor urban youth with the public school system. Even more recently I lived with a women and her three kids in Mattapan, a part of Boston. Her two boys managed to go to high school in Quincy by using their father’s address. However, when it came to her youngest, her father moved out of Quincy in her senior year. And it was common knowledge she lived with her mother in Boston. I guess the school district employs someone to follow kids around who are suspected of going to school in one district but living in another. They followed A. home and came back early in the morning and followed A. and I as I took her to school in the mornings on my way to work. Then they told her she needed to go to school in Boston. A’s mother allowed her to live in Quincy with the parents of a girlfriend so she could finish her senior year in Quincy. And the Quincy public school department was kind enough to let her finish out her senior year in Quincy. The school departments try very hard to stop people from sending their kids to public schools not in their district. And parents keep trying to find inventive ways to send their kids to schools they deem better to give their kids all the advantages they are able. They don’t have many options because without the resources they cannot send their kids to private schools. After trying to get them into a public school they think is better, they really have no options. Yet you cannot send your children to whatever public school you think is better. That is no answer. We need to invest the money to make all schools safe places to get good educations.