[Durham INC] example palming off costs on the public

[Will Wilson]

For education, poverty is a major issue. I've plotted two things at my 
blog at http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?page_id=239:

(1) the composite scores for students (EOCs, EOGs, and stuff) from the 
2500+ NC public school systems against the free lunch fraction of each 
school (first through third plots), and

(2) the 2005 SAT scores against the 2004 NC county average per capita 
income (fourth plot).

We have a serious problem in this state and county (and nation?). Look 
at the data for Wake vs Charlotte-Mecklenburg (red vs green on second 
plot), and Durham vs Wake (circles vs xs on the third plot). If we 
believe education provides opportunities, then we're not providing 
opportunities to low-income students. Wake WAS doing a good job making 
sure they had no "high poverty" schools, and Durham certainly has its 
challenges with that problem. I hope charter schools aren't simply 
pulling the well-off kids away from public schools simply to walk away 
from this poverty problem. We sure need some solutions.

Will

On 10/8/2011 7:44 AM, Pat Carstensen wrote:
>
> I've been hanging out afternoons at South Regional Library and
> noticed clusters of teen-agers showing up every day about 3PM.  After
> a while, I figured out they are students at Kestrel Heights, one of
> our charter schools.  Apparently the Kestrel Heights business plan
> does not include providing transportation OR watching kids until
> their parents get there. Ideally these students would be using the
> internet and getting homework done, but they mostly seem to be "just
> chilling."  They seem nice and well-behaved, but they are middle
> school kids, at an ages where "chilling" can become "fooling around"
> and then "just being dumb." I resent the idea that tax-payer money is
> at risk for anything happening to these kids and then having parents
> cry "inadequate supervision." Regards, pat
>
>
>
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