December 30, 2005

Somalian Kids

Buried in the Times today is an article about how a lot of children of the Somalian refugees who emigrated within the past 10 years or so aren't being educated. It's pretty fucking outrageous and the reporter catches the superintendent in a bunch of lies.

The long and short of the situation seems to be this:
1) The kids don't speak English. A lot of the time a ninth-grade teacher or whoever can't go back and reteach some kids from square one, which is completely understandable.
2) The school system can't afford to pay a bunch of translators. Also understandable. But they have hired two people on a part-time basis, which is a start.
3) The school system, instead of doing the sensible thing and putting all the kids or most of the kids in one place so they can get as much help as possible from the translators, has chosen to stick them all over the city, sending two kids from the same family in different high schools. The reason they're doing this is because having a bunch of kids who don't speak English in one place will lead to the school being designated as "failing" under the No Child Left Behind act, which will do who knows what to property taxes etc.

Obviously the right thing to do is to say "fuck the No Child Left Behind Act, these kids need to be educated." Then they could get their state legislature to tweak the act for NYC. There are 26,000 of these kids, and that isn't unreasonable.

Hopefully, that will lead to a review of the No Child Left Behind Act, which as any child knows is designed to cut funding for public schools so that the federal government has more money to spend on things that will lead to the economic enrichment of President Bush, his family, and their asshole friends.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:10 PM

    A lot of my liberal friends actually say that the No Child Left Behind Act is a step in the right direction, and potentially a good thing.

    The problem, as with any rigid system, is that sometimes it creates perverse incentives when circumstances arise that the system didn't plan for.

    Not everything is Bush's fault. Arguments like yours are part of the reason why Democrats are struggling to persuade swing voters.

    ReplyDelete
  2. a lot of your liberal friends are probably pretty dumb, and haven't read al franken's "lies" book from like 18 months ago. it's some pretty solid shit, especially regarding NCLB.

    your second paragraph was fine.

    blah blah blah democrats not reaching values voters swing voters blah di blah blah blah. fuck that shit. it's easy to make the case that maybe we lost last time around because we ran a fuckwit who wasn't smart enough to play the press game and actually do something when his character was defamed publicly, not because we're out of touch. but i guess it's equally easy just to pull something out of your know-nothing ass.

    didn't you promise (dramatically) to get off my blog like 5 months ago? i am so fucking sick of you.

    ReplyDelete