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Fischel + Murray (Murray (“Secession involves a pair of conditions: 1) it…
Fischel + Murray
Murray
“In regard to equality, vocational education has a direct impact upon a child’s future ability to garner the resources required to compete effectively in our modern economy. Presumably, we are concerned that each of us, within a modern democratic society, has equality of opportunity. If this is true, then we should worry whether some children are unfairly advantaged over others in acquiring the skills necessary for equal opportunity.” (Murray 2009 p. 49)
“1) parents advocate measures to reduce funding for schooling in their own district; 2) they move away from their current residence to a district in which lower property taxes are paid; or 3) they ally themselves with like-minded citizens within their community to break away from their current district and thus form their own school district, or join one in which they will pay less in property taxes (Kozol, 1987: 54–6).”
“Secession involves a pair of conditions: 1) it is the redrawing of political boundaries in such a way as to allow for a change in jurisdiction over a territory and 2) the new political unit takes territory with it. School district secession meets both of these requirements in the most basic sense.”
“It is a government’s obligation to provide compulsory education for its future citizens because it crucially shapes children and prepares them to be autonomous persons and viable citizens.”(Murray, 2009, p. 53)
“There is no principled reason why school district secession proposals should be exempt from the first requirement of minimal realism. If certain members of the community or the school board promote secession, they should not only show why such a break is necessary, but also should demonstrate that it is going to be viable in the immediate future.”
“One disturbing pattern is reflected in the demographics of the groups that attempt school district secession. In the overwhelming majority of attempts at redrawing the boundaries of school districts, its advocates are mainly Caucasian, fairly to very affluent, and currently joined in the same school district with a community of a racial or ethnic minority, whose members garner a much lower per capita income.”
“These citizens believe that school district secession will allow them options for more direct democratic control over their children’s education.”(Murray, 2009, p. 57)
“Some readers may resist my calling school district secession by that name. Their hesitance is more than likely rooted in what appears to be a weak analogy between the attempt by a people or nation to break from a large political unit in the name of attaining full sovereignty over all political and economic matters, and the effort by a small group of citizens exercising what amounts to ‘white tax flight’.” (Murray 2009 p.52)
“Over the past 25 years,there have been a number of separate efforts at breaking away from LAUSD,not only by San Fernando more generally, but also by Hollywood and Carson.”(Murray, 2009, p. 52)
“There is another more principled and convincing justification for school district secession, which unfortunately is sometimes referred to in a confused manner by actual secessionists. Many concerned parents are alarmed by their own impotence in affecting the decision-making process within school districts. These citizens believe that school district secession will allow them options for more direct democratic control over their children’s education.”(Murray 2009 p.57)
“Even when poorer districts tax themselves at much higher rates than richer districts to better fund their home district’s schools, they still must make do with fewer resources because of their more impoverished tax base” (Murray, p. 48).
Fischel
“One-room schools went from more than 200,000 early in the century to near zero in 1972. The decline in the total number of school districts appears to have been largely accounted for by the decline ofrural, one-room schools. Most one-room schools were the only school in the district,6 so consolidation of several one-room schools almost always meant consolidation of several districts” (Fischel 178).
“Age grading is an idea whose origins were once hotly debated.5 What is not debated about age grading is that it was first adopted incities.2 Cities had sufficient population density to enable a large num- ber of children to be assembled in a single school building and dividedby age group into classrooms of homogenous age groups” (Fischer 183).
“Cities had sufficient population density to enable a large number of children to be assembled in a single school building and divided by age group into classrooms of homogenous age groups.”(Fischel, 2009, p. 182)
Many historians of public schools would assign a different direc- tion to the role of property values. They would rightly point out that one of the most frequent objections to consolidation that rural voters voiced was that removal of the old district school would reduce their property values.
Weighing the benefits of a small, one- room district (democratic control, shorter distances, the possibility of part-time schooling) against the costs of remaining outside the system (the less-specialized instruction, the difficulty in accessing high school) almost all voters eventually agreed to the necessary school district consolidations.
“But tax savings were seldom realized by consolidating schools and restoring the larger student-teacher ratios in an age-graded setting."(Fischel, 2009, p. 181)
Having a uniform Carnegie-unit schedule allows reasonable comparisons of cover- age, if not accomplishment, by students from various schools. It makes it easier to integrate new students who transfer from another school into ongoing courses, and it simplifies the preparation of teachers who change jobs.
Age grading is relevant to school district consolidation because it required coordination between classes within the same school and among other schools. All of the teachers in a multigraded school had to agree to the curriculum in each grade
“Age grading required regular attendance, and its logical culmination was high school. Ungraded one-room schools were cheaper not just because the teacher and building were less expensive, but because students could take as much or as little as they wanted of what the school had to offer” (Fischel, p. 182).
“A student who missed two weeks of school was in this setting a far greater liability to the rest of the class. The teacher would have to spend time with the truant to get him up to the level of the rest of the class, and this attention subtracted from the overall pace of the class” (Fischel, p. 183).