>>>>Based on my experience with the many liberals I've met who believe as you do I don't think that any statistics or evidence will sway your mind-set.
>>>>
>>>>Why must we (conservatives) be swayed to agree with you (liberals)? Perhaps it is the other way around and it is you who needs to be swayed to our POV....
>>>
>>>
>>>Marcia, you really have seen examples of systemic racism, and you know it.
>>>Teachers unions and tenure have produced a whole crop of bad teachers, and those bad teachers can't be fired, so they have to go somewhere.
>>>That somewhere ends up being poor minority neighborhoods.
>>>
>>>The champions of the oppressed minorities don't fight this racist outcome, and that is a tragedy.
>>
>>FWIW, last Thursday, I spent the morning in a Philadelphia public school (as an Hour of Code volunteer). Based on the surrounding area (the houses, the businesses, the cars parked on the street) and my knowledge of the city, it was clearly a working class neighborhood. Not far from some gentrifying areas, but not gentrified itself. Although the building itself was old and had exterior construction going on, I was incredibly impressed by this school. This was a conventional public school, not a charter or a magnet. The students were diverse, mostly black and Asian, some clearly Latino.
>>
>>I'd been invited by the tech teacher, who had a lab full of fairly new iMacs (the model where the guts are in the monitor). There was good connectivity. In the three hours I was there, she had four different groups of students of different grades. She'd planned different lessons for each group. The kids came in and got on task quickly. They were polite and engaged. When I spoke about my work, they interacted with me appropriately and asked good questions. Once I was done and they were doing the planned activity (all were exercises around coding), they worked hard, and I saw kids helping their neighbors, generally in good ways. When I helped individual students, they were respectful and responsive.
>>
>>One class included a child with a hearing impairment. He had some kind of assistive device that involved the teacher/speaker wearing a microphone of some sort. (I've worn pretty much the same device at the German DevCon on behalf of one of the attendees.) The teacher handed it over to me with a quick explanation before I spoke. I didn't even know which kid it was until the end of the period when she returned it to him.
>>
>>I left the room at one point for the restroom. Walking down the hall, I passed several other classrooms. Students there were engaged, too.
>>
>>I hadn't known what to expect. Philly schools have had huge financial issues for a decade or more, and there's lots of noise about how they're failing. After this visit, I can see that if every school in Philly were running like this one, it would be an excellent system.
>>
>>Tamar
>
>Good for you!
>Seriously, hurrah for getting involved.
>
>Do you know if the schools actually have the power to fire teachers and are actually using it?

I don't think principals have that power, but I don't know for sure.

Tamar