Whore of Babble-on

So, we have this thing in our school district called “school choice”. What that means is that parents living within a “zone” (four zones for elementary, three for middle, one for high) can choose to send their student to any school within that zone. It’s a way to get around court-mandated busing, since we are all so “integrated” now. It’s also a sham, really, but that’s how education is these days: one hucksterism after another. Anyway, since parents can choose to send their children to any school within their zone (which program will end in a couple of years, thereby allowing the glory of the Grand Old South, by which I mean segregation, to be reborn in our modern times), the teachers and administrators have to put on a dog and pony show to lure parents into selecting their school. None of it really matters anyway, since the parents only want to attend an “A” school. The school grading program is also a bunch of bullshit because there are “A” schools which aren’t making adequate yearly progress as determined by the No Child Left Behind Act, fuck you very much Dubya. The most delicious part of that particular turd floating in poison brulee, is that even though NCLB is a national program, the standards are different from state to state: a subgroup (meaning minority) in Florida is 30 students or more, but in other states a subgroup may be 500 students or more. And of course, even if you are still scoring above the required level, if you drop a point, then you fail that one particular piece for that one subgroup, which means you fail the entire thing (not making adequate yearly progress), which means that you have to offer vouchers after two years. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Okay, I am usually better after I get the scream out. To return to my original point (I am sorry, it’s just that I can’t discuss education without having to scream every two minutes), I was presenting my little “do” for the parents at our “Choice Exploration” night. I felt dirty afterward. We should not have to whore ourselves to lure new parents to come to our school. Every school should be able to offer the same materials, the same curriculum, the same everything. But that’s not the way it is, and it’s definitely not the way we are headed. Fuck: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Do you begin to understand why I can not talk about this? To me, it is the emotional equivalent of talking to Holocaust deniers: you can only scream.