Of all the troubles Jefferson Parish has been having (throughout its history and) lately, this one is pretty damn bad. It's so nice to learn that not only has the parish next door tried to keep people from crossing the river to get a better public education in its environs, they've also been allegedly engaging in tactics that use The Bell Curve as their guide. I leave you to peruse the article at the left and its continuation below.  Click on the pictures to read them, as I haven't linked to nola.com for a year and still have no intention of doing so, as, it seems, the only one who's doing any monitoring of the comments at the cesspool Advance Internet so loosely maintains is Jarvis DeBerry whenever he can.  Sorry the second picture is blurry. The money quote from those who do run the gauntlet with the magnet schools and then try to protest: 

"Parents don't want to rock the boat because they feel that their kids become targets," (Jeremiah Group leader Jackie) Jones said, saying that one parent ended up removing her child from a school because of a backlash after a parent complained about magnet school testing.  "The more she pushed, the more problems the child had.  Parents say you're damned if you do, damned if you don't."


That in a nutshell is why it can be so difficult for parents to enact reform in the schools, and is kinda what paralyzed me from protesting initially when my son's teacher kept asking me when I was going to have my son tested for ADD/ADHD last year and I kept trying to put her off as politely as I could - because I was conscious of the fact that she was going to be his teacher for another two years (thank the Montessori system for that - when it works, it works...but when it doesn't...) and I didn't want any bad feelings between his teacher and I to come down on him.  I cleared the air with her recently and things are better now (thanks to a supportive husband and to a friend of ours forwarding us this article through Facebook, I'm not significantly crazier than I normally am, so there's that, too), but I think I would have to be committed if I had a pretty good idea that my child was being excluded because of his race, I said so after corroborating/commiserating with other parents who'd been through the same thing, and then life was made harder for the little guy as a result.  Trying to negotiate that kind of inhospitable landscape is especially bad when you factor in all the "hidden" fees you still have to pay these days to attend any public charter school - you might as well bankrupt yourself and go for private school for your child.

On a different note, however - let's go to the videos in honor of Jim Henson's birthday!

Why is one allowed and one banned?





While you're all arguing over that, I'm gonna be sitting in my tiki bar...errr...sukkah for a bit. Email me if you wanna join me...