July 1, 2019

Bernie Sanders said: "Does anybody think it's a good idea to put a kid on a bus, travel an hour to another school and to another neighborhood that he or she doesn't know?"

If nobody thinks it — which is what his question implies — why did Kamala Harris castigate Joe Biden for not supporting it and why did Joe Biden defend himself by saying he only didn't support it when it was imposed by the federal government?

A look at the full context — from yesterday's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" — might help you answer my question:
STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to pick up on an issue that came up in Thursday night's debate. It was between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, who are raising his opposition to busing back in the 1970s. I want to bring the debate forward. You've mentioned -- you're concerned about the idea of resegregation of our schools. Does that mean that busing should be on the table today?

SANDERS: Well, I think what we -- resegregation is a very, very serious problem. And the federal government has failed in fighting for fair housing legislation. We need basically in this country well funded public schools, we need to honor our teachers, respect teachers, make sure that they're earning a living wage. We need to take care of those schools today, which have a lot of kids who are, in some cases, actually hungry, coming from troubled families. We need to build public education in this country. We need to make sure that kids go to community schools, which are integrated and that means we have to focus on fair housing legislation and enforcement.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But does that also mean busing? Because your website actually says that you are coming out for repealing of the ban on funding for busing.

SANDERS: No, we've -- busing is certainly an option that is necessary in certain cases, but it is not the optimal. Does anybody think it's a good idea to put a kid on a bus, travel an hour to another school and to another neighborhood that he or she doesn't know? That's not the optimal. What is the optimal is to have great community schools which are integrated, that's what I think most people want to see. That's what I want to see.
Sanders was so evasive! Look how long he filibustered the question the first time Stephanopoulos asked it.  Stephanopoulos repeated the question, fortunately, and really cornered him with that statement from the website. I think Sanders said — if I may paraphrase for clarity — busing is bad, but it might be the least bad option, so it shouldn't be off the table. And let me infer: If busing — that bad idea — isn't on the list of options, it's harder to motivate people to do what is better and spend money on improving schools.

I've been noticing the phrase "We need to make sure" in political speech lately. Sanders says "We need to make sure that kids go to community schools, which are integrated and that means we have to focus on fair housing legislation and enforcement." I see "We need to make sure" as a sort of lie. It really only means we ought to try to get to a place out there that would be really nice to get to.

Here, the very nice place to be is where kids go to schools that are both integrated and in their community. If you're at all considering busing, then you are willing to sacrifice community schools to get more integration. You're obviously not planning to make sure.

Now, Sanders does offer a way of making sure: "fair housing legislation and enforcement." You can get integrated community schools through fair housing legislation? It's a good idea to eradicate racial discrimination in the housing market, and it might have some effect on the racial mix in some community schools, but I don't see how it would make sure that kids go to integrated community schools. So... doesn't that mean that Sanders is, necessarily, for the bad option he wants to keep on the list of options — busing?

No, it just means either: 1. He's incoherent, or 2. The question — "Does anybody think it's a good idea to put a kid on a bus, travel an hour to another school and to another neighborhood that he or she doesn't know?" — is a trick question. His answer is: No, but sometimes the best idea is a bad idea.

269 comments:

1 – 200 of 269   Newer›   Newest»
Mike Sylwester said...

Joe Biden prefers to dish out the insinuations that his political opponents are racists.

He does not seem to like such insinuations being dished out by his political opponents to himself.

MadisonMan said...

Chuck, that's your white privilege talking.

We chose our home based in part on the schools. Many people do that.

The Government of K. Harris wants to take your kid and put them on a bus across town. A nice long bus ride instead of walk to a neighborhood school. And why? So integration happens, I guess, and I'm sure the ends justify the means. It has worked so very well in the past.

MayBee said...

Spot on about "we need to make sure". I think this post sums up most of the Democratic platform this year.

rcocean said...

I think the whole thing if ridiculous, but if it gets rid of Slow Joe, and makes the Democrats more honest about what they are, I'm all in favor of talking about busing.

Isn't there a Court Case that says you can't bus kids across city/school lines? If so, you're not going to have much busing, because the white kids are a minority and already fled to private schools and the suburbs. Bernie is a damn good salesman for socialism. He knows how package it, and highlight the positives without *completely* lying.

AMDG said...

Kamala’s shining moment could turn into an epic blunder.

This is not going to resonate well with all those suburban moms the Democrats won in 2018.

rcocean said...

BTW, nobody I knows put their kid on a school bus. They're either walk/bike to school or the kids are DRIVEN To school. Or if they are over 16 - they drive themselves. My wife insisted we drive our kids to school, which would have astounded my Mother.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Stephanopoulos should have asked Sanders how far you would have to bus kids to integrate Vermont.

Bay Area Guy said...

No need for busing in Vermont - no blacks there, it's all white!

When did liberal Vermont adopt the mantle of white supremacy?

rcocean said...

"This is not going to resonate well with all those suburban moms the Democrats won in 2018."

Ha. Those "Liberal suburban Moms" supported Busing in the 1980s or didn't care. They sent their kids to private schools and/or didn't have busing in the suburbs.

Drago said...

LLR Chuck is quickly out of the gate with a weak Dem Damage Control attempt.

The left/MSM-left/LLR-left has determined that Biden and Sanders are not their choice and are going to get them out of the race while simultaneously running interference for Warren and Harris by making Warren and Harris' insane lefty policies seem natural and uncontroversial.

Hence LLR Chuck's non-subtle attempt here.

This is very similar to how LLR Chuck passionately defended Da Nang Dick Blumenthals repeated serial lies about his combat record (he had none) over many years and multiple occurences at multiple venues and events.

LLR Chuck termed that a "one time slip of the tongue".

LLR Chuck is going to be very busy over the next 18 months mitigating Team Dems gaffes and lunacy.

rcocean said...

If you'd told me we'd be talking about busing in 2019 in the age of Trump, I never would've believed it. What's up next, the Panama Canal?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

One of the problems with being an old White guy, even if your a Commie fantasist like Bernie, is that sometimes you just can’t help reverting to common sense. And in a Democrat primary, that’s a no-no.

AllenS said...

The local school where I live is 12 miles away.

gilbar said...

Bernie said...
We need basically in this country well funded public schools, we need to honor our teachers, respect teachers, make sure that they're earning a living wage.


so,
A) more money for schools (see step D)
B) honor our teachers (they vote Demo!)
C) respect our teachers (see step B)
D) RAISES! (after all, see step B!)

Back in the school daze, this El Ed major* passed me the pipe, and said:
"Do You REALIZE? That GARBAGE MEN make More Money Than Teachers DO!!!"

and i said; "Maybe you should become a Garbage Man?"
And SHE said; "GROSS! I'd NEVER DO THAT!!!"

El Ed major* "Anyone who doesn't understand the Education problem has never fucked an El Ed Major PJ O'Rourke

Rory said...

"What's up next, the Panama Canal?"

He did just go visit a tinhorn dictator.

Dave Schuler said...

I think he's assuming something not in evidence: that people do not self-segregate.

Quite to the contrary I think that most people of all races and ethnicities prefer to live among people "like them" whatever that means. As long as that's the case and as long as school financing is mostly a local matter and there is a substantial income differential between blacks and whites community schools will be worse for blacks.

stlcdr said...

Bussing is stupid. I'd also say 'racist' but the very definition of that word has become meaningless.

However, the argument here that it is racist to oppose bussing. Racist as in i'ts a bad thing that any good (white) leftist goes to great contortions to not be labeled.

But then, this argument is not about bussing (forced integration, vs. forced segregation) - the merits for or against - is it? Oh, and why weren't white kids bussed to predominantly black schools?

Plus: it's been, what, nearly two generations? How'd it work out?

Bay Area Guy said...

God I hope Bernie wins the Dem nomination. The few sane middle-class Dems left who own homes, like their schools, like their health insurance, will flee in droves.

chickelit said...

AMDG said...
Kamala’s shining moment could turn into an epic blunder.

Who decided this was a "shining moment"? Her voice cracked with emotion as she faced off an old man. How would she fare on the world stage instead of some trumped-up make Kamala shine political event?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Harris is a bully. Biden is a coward. The left want to force Biden to turn hard left, which requires spoon bending flip-flops and history-erasing memory hole. He looks like a bumbling cowardly fool as he attempts to obey them, and walk the line.

Swede said...

I imagine most white Democrat moms with small kids went "what?" when Harris said she'd bus their little darlings to some school that isn't in the white, affluent enclave they live in.

What are the one's that can't afford to send junior to private school going to do now?

Vote for Harris?

Fernandinande said...

Well, I think what we -- resegregation is a very, very serious problem.

The State's subjects consistently abuse their freedom and select the wrong places to live. This needs to stop.

We need basically in this country well funded public schools, we need to honor our teachers, respect teachers, make sure that they're earning a living wage.

They're already very well paid, and also get wonderful tax-paid retirements.

We need to take care of those schools today, which have a lot of kids who are, in some cases, actually hungry, coming from troubled families.

They get "free" food at school.

And I love the way They dishonestly and consistently use the word "troubled" when they mean "troubling".

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

We cannot fix public education with the Teacher's Union(D) money whores in the way.

gspencer said...

"Does anybody think it’s a good idea to bus kids an hour to another neighborhood?"

Apparently, Bernie, there are a lot of people who do. You might recognize them. They're all Democrats. Who do you think was behind all the busing in the 1970s?

Two-eyed Jack said...

Bussing may be stupid, but it is probably NP Complete as well. Alameda county, where Kamala was bussed, has a school population that is 10% black and 18% white. The rest is various asian, Hispanic and Indian-Jamaican blends. Bussing is relic of a Black/White split that is not today's reality.

Chuck said...

Haha! Even I am surprised by today's level of Althouse-comments cluelessness.

rehajm said...

I imagine most white Democrat moms with small kids went "what?" when Harris said she'd bus their little darlings to some school that isn't in the white, affluent enclave they live in.

Dad just palm slapped his forehead for taking out that mortgage that would choke a horse.

Tommy Duncan said...

I posted this a few days ago:

A serious inquiry: If residents are allowed to freely choose where to live, why shoudln't the neighborhood schools reflect the chosen demographics of the residents?

A second inquiry: How does forced integration benefit the residents of a neighborhood and how does it improve the educational experience of the students? If whites suppress minorities and systemically act with racial bias, wouldn't it be better to keep the whites away from minorities thus allowing the minorities to thrive in the absence of racial oppression?

6/28/19, 12:06 PM

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Yeah, Chuck. A “plan”. You couldn’t possibly be this naive.

Michael K said...

In affluent Orange County, the big problem with parents driving kids to school was that the original planning of tube community was to have schools walking distance and each cluster of homes would have a school in the middle of the cluster so kids could walk. Then came the California housing inflation and young parents could no longer afford to live near those schools. The result was a traffic jam every morning around the school. The homeowners near the school would be constantly complaining to the planning commission, which is how I got involved.

My son's kids could walk to school but the school was infected with Common Core so they found a charter school, which the kids love. Of course, they had to drive them there. Now the oldest is in high school and has her own car so she can drive her brother who is now a freshman. Life in southern California.

Michael K said...

Chuck has found the "Boing Boing News letter" which will keep grimm entertained and might divert his attention from trolling us.

Fernandinande said...

A serious inquiry: If residents are allowed to freely choose where to live, why shoudln't the neighborhood schools reflect the chosen demographics of the residents?

Because blacks do poorly in school. "They" blame the schools because They can't (politically) identify the real problem, which is stupid children.

That's the main basis for every education policy.

A second inquiry: How does forced integration benefit the residents of a neighborhood and how does it improve the educational experience of the students?

It doesn't.

If whites suppress minorities and systemically act with racial bias,

They don't.

wouldn't it be better to keep the whites away from minorities thus allowing the minorities to thrive in the absence of racial oppression?

You've entered the world of Victimization Whack-a-Mole

As long as they refuse to ID the real "problem", nothing will work so They play around with the same nonsense over and over; it's deeply sensible.

rcocean said...

Its BUSING - you dumb motherfuckers. Stop it.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

This is all second order stuff. When will a candidate get real and address the root of the problem: people choosing to segregate by neighborhood, based on income?

Until you force a given amount of diversity--economic and racial--on people's "choices" of where to live then you're going to end up with a problem of individuals sorting themselves by income (and usually also by race, ideology, religion, etc) and you're right back to where we started.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Fathom the millions upon millions of dollars that funnel to the teacher's union bureaucracy and the democrat party apparatus, that could instead go to actual teacher pay.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Mr. & Mrs. America go to work, save money for a house, find the best school system they can afford a home in, buy it, get ready to send their 2.5 kids there...and Senator Goodthink decides that their kids are needed in some other school, one that's not as good, quite a distance away in order to perfect the racial balance. Oh well, guys, gotta do your part for the cause!

The rich liberals, as usual, exempt themselves from the consequences of their policies: they simply enroll their kids in (hugely-white) private schools.

Fernandinande said...

the problem: people choosing to segregate by neighborhood, based on income?

Why is that a problem?

Chuck said...

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...
Yeah, Chuck. A “plan”. You couldn’t possibly be this naive.


Right! Trump says that in four weeks we will be seeing his federal busing "plan." A plan that will be "interesting and surprising"! That's news! Yuuge news? Who thought that there would be a federal busing plan from the Trump Administration? And at almost the same time that Trump's secret "phenomenal" health care plan would be announced.

Count me as interested, and surprised.

Paul said...

If the liberals can't bus kids... then they will order home owners to MOVE into other areas! Trust me... if they could, they would.

buwaya said...

A "good" school is created by a critical mass of good students.
Good students which cannot be conjured out of the ground by any education policy.

The idea of an input-based "great community school" is a will-o-wisp fantasy, or more realistically these days a rhetorical hand-wave intended to avoid the question.

The entire mass of the US establishment is fixed on denying causality, through a combination of political necessity and, not a little, constant auto-brainwashing. Their propaganda has mainly convinced the propagandists.

Nonapod said...

The praise for Harris for zinging Joe with busing thing does seem a bit weird, even for modern Democrats.

It's funny, a lot of the ideas being trotted out by the Dems lately are failures of the past. We've now been reintroduced to everything from reparations to busing. But of course the real golden oldie is Socialism. Everything old is new again.

To be fair I guess open boarders is new-ish. Since they can't realiably win elections, the idea of importing in a bunch of new people for the purposes of inflating representation in congress and the electoral college (not to mention as a new crop of potentially new Dem voters) feels new at least.

Paul said...

If the liberals cannot bus kids to other schools then they will force home owners to MOVE to areas as they deem necessary. Trust me.. if they could, they would and if the can they will!

HoodlumDoodlum said...

The younger white people moving into my mostly-black neighborhood now, desegregating it, are often condemned as "gentrifiers" ruining the feel and traditions of the area and pushing little old ladies out of their homes via higher taxes (which go to funding the bad-but-improving public school system). If they all left it'd be "white flight" though.

BarrySanders20 said...

I'd love to see Bernie try to control a classroom of inner city school kids. Not Burlington, VT. Somewhere like Memphis TN. Or even Madison WI. And then talk to 1) the parents of the kids who are in those schools and 2) the parents who would never under any circumstances allow their kids to be bused into the asylum. If somehow the D's were able to force that outcome, the winners would be the private and parochial schools.

Drago said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
walter said...

The Left has been working very hard since about 2008 to re-segregate the country.
And they ain't no wayzzze tyyred.

Charlie said...

"If you'd told me we'd be talking about busing in 2019 in the age of Trump, I never would've believed it. What's up next, the Panama Canal?"

No up next is the Fairness Doctrine. And then we'll go to the trash heap to resurrect more awful ideas that were discarded decades ago.

narayanan said...

From Vocabulary.com Dictionary

A shibboleth is like a motto or catchphrase that members of a group tend to say, like the conservative shibboleth that the only good government is a small government.

As long as the population is unwilling to give up the liberal shibboleth that the only good school is a government run school - children will be playthings of bureaucrats and conditioned to be serfs for the rest of life.

And then we have this thread discussing the ins and outs of treating children as playthings in a good way!

on a blog run by ConLaw Emerita Professora of all things

Lewis Wetzel said...

"We need to make sure"
The "we" in there is the "who" in Lenin's famous "who, whom" aphorism.
In this case "who" is Sanders & his supporters and "whom" is the people who will see their children bused to communities where they will be strangers.
I am old enough, barely, to remember the federal-ordered busing controversy of the 1970s. A lot of the anger was directed at out-of-state bureaucrats and judges whose own children attended private schools. They were ordering the children of other people bused across town to satisfy their moral vanity.

Wince said...

"We need to make sure" is a means of excusing the failures of big government with the assurance that even more government is the solution.

For example, school choice on the part of parents and students is the best way to decide whether a bus ride is the best way to obtain a better eduction, rather than more courts or bureaucracy.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Fernandistein said...the problem: people choosing to segregate by neighborhood, based on income?

Why is that a problem?


Are you asking me or Bernie? Bernie and the nice centrist people who think he has a great point say its a problem because it leads to rich white neighborhoods and less rich nonwhite neighbrhoods, which means unequal funding for the school systems "by race" and that's the bad kind of segregation.

My point is you can solve that problem by simply not letting individuals choose where to live--if your choice of home had to be approved by the Bernie Bureaucracy then he'd make sure every location had the correct mix of people by race and income. No one has the balls to actually say that out loud, of course.

The larger point is that individual freedom and liberty often leads to outcomes that our self-described moral superiors dislike. THEY know precisely how integrated each neighborhood and school should be and if the decisions of free citizens thwart that in some way then steps must be taken--freedom must be curtailed! Busing is just a chickenshit way to do it--I'd have more respect for them if they'd just state the clear implication of their ideology plainly.

buwaya said...

School funding in the US context has nothing to do with educational results. This was established from the outset by Colemans massive, pioneering "Great Society" study of 1966. Indeed, even in 1965-66 it was found that educational spending was remarkably uniform. This has been repeated over and over since.

This has been consistently ignored ever since.

The larger lesson here, for the instruction of the naive and inexperienced, is that public policy is never, and can never, be driven by "science".

Lewis Wetzel said...

Against freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom to defend yourself . . . but don't you dare call them un-American, don't you dare suggest that their ideas are less than the best that America can offer. Or you will be silenced.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Every state ranks "49th" in education funding. Well, when election time rolls around.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

It goes without saying that the kind of people who most frequently scold us unenlightened masses about our ugly views, opinions, and choices usually live, themselves, in less racially diverse neighborhoods and send their kids to undiverse schools (where they'll boast about x% of "minority" students but those are typically the many east Asian and a few African American children of very wealthy parents).

You're a bad person if you don't support importing millions of poor uneducated immigrants, but the people saying that will never have one of THEIR kids in a class with 'em. That's someone else's problem.

Seeing Red said...

How ironic that by the time they get to college, it’s separate dorms, grad ceremonies and hang out buildings.

Maybe they should be asked how they intend to integrate colleges.

Drago said...

Admittedly these are difficult times for the leftists/LLR-leftists like LLR Chuck.

They need to get Trump out to give the dems all the power, but all their preferred candidates are insane, like themselves.

The "solution"?

Pretend that its Trump that is raising the issues the lunatic lefties are raising!!

Similar to how LLR Chuck strongly defends obamacare, open borders and infanticide and then tries to twist those bizarre policy preferences into something Trump is responsible for (see: Chuck quote "Department of Black People")

This is an interesting strategy on the part of the left/LLR-left. They want to push the progressive envelope to satisfy their far left base, including the Bill Kristols, Charlie Sykes, Bret Stephens, etc of the world, but they are not yet confident they have sufficient numbers to just push straight thru.

Thus: Drag Trump in and pretend he is a part of their insane discussions.

No different than how Chuck and his lefty allies are still trying to transfer responsibility for Jim Crow and Slavery to conservatives and republicans.

jimbino said...

The way to end up with mixed-race housing and schools is to subsidize the production of mixed-race babies and, perhaps, tax the production of single-race babies to finance the plan. One option is to offer free college to mixed-race kids. We now have the technology to match up different minority races with our Whites.

jaydub said...

It's really unfortunate that people like Bernie Sanders are not in the senate so they can do something about this busing issue.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

How about we teach actual subjects like math, history and science, instead of whiny social justice garbage and global worming scare-mongering.

Michael said...

Ah, money for the schools! Every school in every poor performing district could be give $100 million and it would not make a difference. Money is not the problem.

John Borell said...

I'm shocked, shocked a leftist like Bernie is incoherent about the implementation or effects of one of his grand plans.

traditionalguy said...

Busing is a tool. It is us to remove people from their support system(i.e.,community). It weakens them. Confiscating everybody's guns is a tool. It weakens them. Legalizing Marijuana is a tool. It weakens them. Removing middle class jobs is a tool.It weakens them. Teaching boys to be pansies is a tool. It weakens them.

Traditional WASP America has scared the crap out of our New World Order Masters.

Fernandinande said...

"Why is that a problem?"
Are you asking me or Bernie?


You. It sounds like you think it's a problem because you keep calling it a problem. Do you think it's problem, and if so, why?

I think the real problem is people trying to "fix" a situation that isn't fixable and that isn't actually a problem in the first place.

Drago said...

John Borell: "I'm shocked, shocked a leftist like Bernie is incoherent about the implementation or effects of one of his grand plans."

Similarly, I'm shocked, shocked a leftist like LLR Chuck is incoherent about the implementation or effects of one of his grand Moby plans for taking the heat of lunatic lefties.

Birches said...

We are now in the South after a lifetime out West and the way schools are done here are interesting. I assume that they're done this way to make bussing for integration easier. Our elementary school is huge. It's not located in a neighborhood, but next to a busy road and the middle school. Most kids ride the bus because it's easier. They discourage parent drop offs. This is how all of the elementary schools are as far as I can tell. My kids should get on the bus at 6:47 for school that begins at 7:50. They aren't on the bus the whole time, but the bus has to get to school early to make sure that kids that eat breakfast at school have time to do so. Our schools in AZ and CO didn't even have busses for elementary schools. Every kid lived within a mile of the school.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Important take-away from Harris-Biden exchange is Harris won, Biden lost. Busing was just a handy tool for Harris. It is a non-issue. All 20+ contenders favor increasing $$ and power.

Sanders is correct that busing is a poor tool to equalize public education opportunity. Full parental school choice, private schools, perhaps vouchers, are better tools.

buwaya said...

As for "science", here, we are working, still, in near-complete ignorance.
At best we have unimpeachable empirical evidence about that which does not work - ref Coleman, etc.

How do you make bad students into good students?

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Maybe the shadow knows, but nobody does who has his hands on the spigot of $trillions spent on education.

The Minnow Wrangler said...

I think you are missing Bernie's point about housing regulations. Fairness means you need a lot more poor black people in your quiet suburban neighborhood. That is a more effective way of "integrating" schools than busing.

A couple of commenters seem to get it: Hoodlum Doodlum, "Until you force a given amount of diversity--economic and racial--on people's "choices" of where to live then you're going to end up with a problem of individuals sorting themselves by income (and usually also by race, ideology, religion, etc) and you're right back to where we started." Also, "My point is you can solve that problem by simply not letting individuals choose where to live--if your choice of home had to be approved by the Bernie Bureaucracy then he'd make sure every location had the correct mix of people by race and income. No one has the balls to actually say that out loud, of course."

Exactly, this is the essence of Bernie's "plan". No more "white flight." Your formerly nice neighborhood will be assimilated. So sorry if you can't afford to send your kids to Sidwell Friends.

Seeing Red said...

With no guns to protect yourself.

jaydub said...

Seems to me the re segregation problem is more pronounced in college than public schools. Which begs the question: should the kids at Morehouse be bused to Georgia Tech and vice versa? Or, how about the black student union patrons at GT being bused to the white student union at Morehouse....Oh wait. Never mind.

buwaya said...

Vouchers and charters failed too by the way.
They made a marginal difference where they were tried.

A marginal improvement is better than the status quo, but did not close "the gap" to the extent hoped for by many proponents. This is why Diane Ravitch flipped from pro to anti.

Lewis Wetzel said...

" Blogger Michael said...

Ah, money for the schools! Every school in every poor performing district could be give $100 million and it would not make a difference. Money is not the problem."

The teachers and administrators of public schools must be pandered to. All Democrat candidates must praise and kowtow to them. You hear people talk about the "Democrat base," but they do not identify who they are. Democrat activists are overwhelmingly employees of the public school system.
So you go to college, get a degree in teaching (one of the easiest degrees to get), and now you are fit to tell Americans what the best society is and how you, and only you, can create it.

sinz52 said...

rcocean said: "If you'd told me we'd be talking about busing in 2019 in the age of Trump, I never would've believed it. What's up next, the Panama Canal?"

Given Trump's tariffs on Canada (!!!), we may even have to resurrect "Fifty-four forty or fight!"

sinz52 said...

Statistically, it's safer for schoolchildren to ride school buses than be driven to school by their parents. And it's much safer than trying to drive themselves (teenagers have the highest rate of auto accidents).

There are far fewer children killed or injured in school bus accidents than in car accidents.

Known Unknown said...

"We need to make sure" = we will punish you with taxes and regulations if you do not comply.

doctrev said...

I'm surprised that everyone, including Althouse, is pretending not to understand what Bernie is really thinking. To wit:

"Are you people retarded? Busing was a failed policy 40 years ago, and that was before Khan Academy, charters, and homeschooling. Now some mixed-race whore who grew up in Canada wants to bring it back? Fuck me, if I say any of that it'll be called racism. Oy gevalt, Trump's gonna win 40 states."

Really, I'm all for forced busing. It accomplishes all of my objectives: destroy public education, foment intense hatred for the federal government, and expose children whose parents don't care about them to the truth of our happy multicultural utopia.

buwaya said...

Section 8 is a long standing policy to do just what you are talking about re housing desegregation.

wildswan said...

Charter schools and Catholic schools have a pretty good record at educating kids from any zip code. Those schools enforce discipline and teach real subjects. And that's what makes the difference there - not the zip code from which people come. The public schools do not enforce discipline but the children of the middle class are mostly self-disciplined like their parents. So in those schools zip code does make a difference. The teachers' unions insist that higher salaries for teachers will make a difference in the future - "show you love us." But teachers have high salaries, pensions and benefits in places like DC without it making any difference.

And what is this difference? In Milwaukee and other major cities this year 40% of the the young black men who entered the public high schools four years ago have left in 2019 without a high school degree. The white ethnics in that situation just before World war II rose during the next sixty years because they had good union jobs in manufacturing and that is the situation Trump is working to create again. Look, every kid in a bad school should be free to leave. If we had built the wall we'd have $4.5 billion to Uber them to better schools they chose elsewhere instead of using $4.5 billion to buy Pampers for Guatemalan babies as a human right. But - if it changed tomorrow - there'd still be the guys who missed out and they'd still need the manufacturing economy which the Dems are still trying to destroy as AOC did to the Amazon technology manufacturing center in NYC. And no one stopped her.

J. Farmer said...

Integration is the most racist policy imaginable. It basically says to blacks that they cannot have good communities or good schools unless they are in proximity to white people.

AlbertAnonymous said...

“We need to make sure that kids go to community schools, which are integrated ...”

Why? Why are we so insistent on forcing integration?

If there was actual government forced segregation, I can see where we’d want to stop that. Let people live/work/attend school wherever they’d like. But that’s not the case.

bagoh20 said...

Be more precise, Bernie. Does anyone want to send their kids to an inner city school in a city run by Democrats? That's really the issue, not busing in general, or inner city parents not wanting their kids in better schools, or even inner city kids coming to safer neighborhoods. The real issue is do people living in decent neighborhoods want to send their kids to where long running Democratic policy is in full force. No. Nobody who loves their kids wants to do that, and you want the whole nation to be an inner city neighborhood run by Democrats. We could just send our kids to Venezuela to get the real Bernie world experience.

bagoh20 said...

Sure, the suburban schools are better and safer, but there is all that acting white stuff you have to endure. Ain't nobody got time fo dat.

Drago said...

sinz52: "Given Trump's tariffs on Canada (!!!), we may even have to resurrect "Fifty-four forty or fight!"

Filed under Stupid arguments from last year.

Canada's unfair tariffs have been knocked back and the moronic NAFTA loopholes that allowed Asia and Europe to bypass US tariffs are closed in the USMCA.

Take a look at what Xi and the Chinese did to little Justin once the corrupt loophole was closed.

But, uh, thanks for playing.

Chuck said...

"Policy." Yeah, right it's a policy and not a plan. Only four weeks until the Trump federal busing POLICY. I can hardly wait. It will be interesting. It will be surprising. It might even happen. But I doubt it. But maybe, having been asked about federal busing, Trump wasn't talking about "busing" or any federal action at all.

So we can calendar August 1, 2019 as the date for news on Trump's federal busing policy (not a plan, and maybe not about busing at all) and Trump's "phenomenal" federal health care plan.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Chuck - considering the elite pile of Romney Republicans keep Trump from keeping his promises - you should be happy.

Drago said...

I must admit, even I am surprised at how quickly LLR Chuck took direction from his dem/lefty betters and adjusted his lefty tactics to align with the needs of Harris & Warren.

I thought LLR Chuck would have continued his passionate defense of Biden given Biden assuming the role of Dem Establishment Inevitable Candidate.

Similar to Chuck bit down hard on Inevitable Hillary.

Just goes to show how the far left has completely captured the imagination of the dem base (which includes the LLR's).

Biden and Bernie are toast.

Its now a Dem Sprint to full Marxist Socialism.

doctrev said...

I know you're disappointed that no one took a shot at the President in the DMZ, because you want the President dead, but seriously: stop lying. Drago already told you why you're being stupid about what the President actually said. Don't do that.

doctrev said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlU9jOYekZE

Trump would just have to play some of these clips as ads, and he would win the election that day. Bam. Now I'm actually hoping Kamala Harris wins the nom: short of banning Trump from TV entirely, they'll never manage to stop this.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If democratics ran the curriculum

-Trump hate 101
-The importance of Maddow and Colbert in societal structures 101
-How to raise Antfia in your basement 101
-Intro to Global Warming fear mongering 101
-You're all racists, because reasons 101
-Gender-confusion and speech crimes 101
-Open borders are good for roads and bridges 101

Drago said...

LLR And Noted Lying Racist Poster Chuck: "
"Policy." Yeah, right it's a policy and not a plan. Only four weeks until the Trump federal busing POLICY."

Chuck now admits his use of the word "plan" was a lie.

Of course Chuck continues with his previously noted "federal busing" lie.

Note how "fluid" Chuck's use of quote marks happens to be as he advances todays lefty lies.

Tell us Chuck, given your astonishing history of mendacious posting and incredible lying, did you really think this latest pathetic effort of yours would escape scrutiny?

LOL

Or did you think you could just slip this one in to deflect for your gal Kamala and get away?

Too funny.

bagoh20 said...

I can imagine quality effective schools in most every neighborhood, but not if they are run by the same policies supported by those running them now - Democrats and teacher unions. That should be self-evident to everyone. My imagined schools would be privately run, and many would be religious and charity based. They would cost far less, have suspension and expulsion policies that were real, and would produce educated graduates. I don't see the logic of arguments against expulsion. The worst kids will not graduate with any skills anyway, and the longer they are in there the more damage they do to the other kids, so you get less than nothing for keeping them in school.

Of course, none of this can happen, becuase of the culture of corruption, victim-hood, and the two most common forms of racism today: reverse racism, and soft racism of low expectations. So yes racism is a big problem in education, just not the kind you hear about all day.

buwaya said...

Integration was originally justified by "peer effects", that is, keeping black children within a predominantly white peer group would socialize them into adopting white values and culture, hence improving their overall performance.

This was the working hypothesis for observations made by the Coleman study.

That was the explicit justification for the original busing policies. To this day that is the only semi-rigorous justification for school integration.

Of course, today it would be seen as viciously racist.

LA_Bob said...

rcocean said, "If you'd told me we'd be talking about busing in 2019 in the age of Trump, I never would've believed it."

Right there with you. I remember the busing controversies from 40 -50 years ago, and they were most contentious.

Kamala only used it to flog Biden after his faux pas with "segregationists". It wasn't a serious proposal. But, it has become a litmus test about white privilege. Were you, Mr White Man, sufficiently deferential to people of color back in the day? Bernie, who has problems with minority voters, slipped into the trap.

I'm not concerned busing for integration will ever be serious policy again. Too much "ethnic pride" today to waste on Integratin' the schools.

But if it did become policy, they would only bus white kids to minority schools to improve their "wokeness". "Kids of color" don't need to be bused to sit next to white kids to improve their victimhood skills.

Menahem Globus said...

About half my high school was bused in from the reservation when I was a teen. It wasn't for integration purposes but because there weren't any accredited high schools on the rez. Aside from getting a decent lunch it really sucked for the kids. Those who played sports were often gone from home 14-15 hours a day. I can tell you that the education they got was second rate at best.

GatorNavy said...

Just a brief note about busing in kids from different neighborhoods; they tried this in Chicago just a couple of years and the result was literally murder.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-children-falling-victim-gang-related-shootings-article-1.2718415

https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/chicago-shootings/index.html

https://www.alternet.org/2012/12/260-school-children-killed-chicago-3-years-where-are-tears-them/

Chuck said...

doctrev, I beg your pardon but I am on record formally opposing the assassination of Donald Trump. Not only did I state my firm opposition to an assassination, I stated why I opposed it.

How much more wrong can you get?

But now your false phony personal attack on me has dragged this page a little further off the topic of federal busing.

Ann Althouse said...

I caused some incoherence in later comments by deleting the first 2 comments. One criticized me for not taking on Kamala Harris’s remarks about busing, but I have a long post last Friday, the day after the debate, on that subject.The other was a similar attack for something I’m failing to talk about. This post is this post. Comment on this subject matter. It’s especially important when you are the first or one of the first commenters to respect the scope of the post. Continued comments that violate this proposition make you look like a troll and increase the chance that many of your posts will be deleted simply because I have come to believe that you are trying to undermine this forum.

bagoh20 said...

Busing no doubt does help some inner city kids who have their heads on straight to begin with, which comes from their parents. I think it helped especially at the beginning and it could have been even more effective before the sixties and liberal policies turned Blacks so self destructive. We used to have more in common, more common values, and similar visions for our futures, similar marriage rates and family structures, but that has changed significantly. It's the values that are our problem, some people just have shit for values, and the government creates and supports that.

Temujin said...

There's so much here.

1) First of all, when a Socialist says, "We need to make sure...", they are not saying we ought to try to get to this other place.... They are saying, by force of Government we will make you do what we wish. By force. We determine what is right, and we will tell you when and how we want this 'right' thing done.

2) Love Bernie's line: Does anybody think it's a good idea to put a kid on a bus, travel an hour to another school and to another neighborhood that he or she doesn't know? But somehow dragging a kid across Mexico or Central America through miles of dangerous land, without proper food, water, shelter, to enter a country illegally where they know no one and where they have no idea what awaits them is the right thing to do?

3) And again I bring this up: Why is the Left so adamant that our K-12 schools are not integrated enough, when the Left is also working hard to re-segregate the colleges and universities? College Fix

Drago said...

If I had to guess what "policy" Trump would be offering in 4 weeks, I would guess it would involve expanding School Choice options/funds which is desperately desired by inner city parents whose children are trapped LLR Chuck approved and dem run "educational" nightmare scenarios.

No wonder LLR Chuck is flailing for Team Dem to change the subject.

Gahrie said...

So…..we need to bus the kids to school to integrate them, so that when they go to college they can demand segregation.

Gahrie said...

If I had to guess what "policy" Trump would be offering in 4 weeks, I would guess it would involve expanding School Choice options/funds which is desperately desired by inner city parents whose children are trapped LLR Chuck approved and dem run "educational" nightmare scenarios.

I am a public school teacher, and I support vouchers, charters and parental choice.

doctrev said...

Chuck, you don't have to run away from your words. The reason you gave was that killing the President would be make him a martyr and be politicaly counter-productive. But who could blame liberals such as yourself if he was killed in North Korea? It would just be called another "boneheaded" Trump move with foreseeable consequences.

You get attacked a lot, because everyone else here keeps stapling your poorly thought out trolling to your head. It will continue.

And as I support Kamala Harris' forced busing plans, further debate doesn't really interest me.

John henry said...

Didn't kamala Harris choose to go to a segregated school? Howard University.

So who the Hell is she to tell us that segregated schools are so bad children need to spend hours on a bus each day?

A broken clock is right twice a day. Bernie has a long way to go to get there but he is right on this one.

Fuck Harris and her racial smugness.

John Henry

bagoh20 said...

I blame Hippies and Boomers in general. Our parents where right all along, and if we just kept the progress going as it was without abandoning the good stuff they had for us we might have a more just and fair society today. What we did with all our activism and tradition hate was create a permanent aggrieved culture that has lost it's sense of gratitude for just about everything, regardless of its value.

Drago said...

School Choice is the fastest most efficient option for increasing educationsl options for parents and creating improved educational outcomes for students.

Which is precisely why the dems and LLR Chuck cant allow that to happen.

Not to mention the money laundering schemes of the dems/LLR's from the taxpayers to the LLR-approved corrupt unions back to the dems and the ability to keep kids trapped un the left/LLR indoctrination centers.

Drago said...

Gahrie: "I am a public school teacher, and I support vouchers, charters and parental choice."

Every great teacher I ever met, when they could speak freely, did as well.

But they have to be careful.

You never know when a LLR might be lurking about waiting to turn you in to Team Robespierre 2019.

John henry said...

Rcocean,

Actually we are going to be talking about the Panama, or at least an isthmus, canal.

The Chinese canal through Nicaragua was just in the news this am.

I think they ran out of money or something.

John Henry

buwaya said...

The state of US educational theory and practice is a hopeless muddle.
To a great degree this is the result of decades of failure in pursuit of the holy grail, that of closing "the gap". Everything has been tried, and nothing has worked, not substantially. The "right" has done better than the "left" on this, with some improvements to show at least, but we are talking of marginal outcomes, nibbles at "the gap", and not solutions.

The resulting hopelessness and despair has led to the dominance of essentially religious visions, of various sorts, where dogma and ideology and social dynamics among the educational leadership have driven out whatever science there ever was.

This has led to an increase in the generally corrupt state of American higher education. Its interesting how many connections there are between this process and US politics. Obamas mentor Bill Ayers was an important cobtributor to ideological theories of education, focusing on equity vs performance. Obama worked for the Annenberg Foundation, pushing, more or less, Ayers ideas on schools.

The collapse of the Liberal Arts can be directly connected to this, as the bulk of Liberal Arts BA's went to would-be schoolteachers.

Its all connected, and it has several beginnings, but that problem of "the gap" is a major one. I like the analogy of the quest for the Holy Grail by the knights of the Round Table. They mostly died in its pursuit, crippling King Arthurs base of power.

Drago said...

Kamala Harris "republican" Chuck: "But now your false phony personal attack on me has dragged this page a little further off the topic of federal busing."

Ooh! Ooh!

Now do falsified Trump "quotes"!

LOL

Pathetic..in a sad yet funny sort of way.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If it takes a bus to get a kid out of a failing school and out to a better one, what's the big deal? I agree with Bernie, it's not optimal, but it's better than.. the failing school.
Bernie will never address the problem of failing inner city schools because that's racist.

doctrev said...

John Henry, what you don't know about Kamala Harris is that she didn't just go to Canada when she was 12, she went to Quebec, at Westmount High. For those of you without points in Knowledge (Canada), Kamala Harris would have been about as popular as poison ivy outside the school. Not just for being black, but for only speaking English. She in turn would have grown up under Bill 101, the Quebec language act, which was passed by the National Assembly when she was 13.

Kamala Harris is going to have an even deeper dislike of white people than Barack Obama obviously did, admittedly grounded in the provincial bigotry of the Quebecois. Good luck expecting racial reconciliation from her!

bagoh20 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bagoh20 said...

The Chinese should build a canal though Mexico. I'd suggest they follow the Rio Grande riverbed.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

btw - as a kid from the 'burbs', my folks made me ride a bus 1 hour each way to school from grade 4 to grade 8. It sucked, but the private school was better than the local public options.

Big Mike said...

I think it's really quaint, how socialists like Bernie and Liz Warren think that if only you have the right set of regulations, and enforce them with enough force, then a world of sweetness and light will be the inevitable result.

At any rate if you want to "honor the teachers" that really want to teach, then you need to remove the undisciplined students from their classrooms. But don't try explaining that to the Madison school board.

Drago said...

John henry: "Didn't kamala Harris choose to go to a segregated school? Howard University."

Kamala Harris is the beneficiary of slaveholder descendants.

She ought to be making direct amends to the descendants of those slaves.

Kevin said...

If it takes a bus to get a kid out of a failing school and out to a better one, what's the big deal? I agree with Bernie, it's not optimal, but it's better than.. the failing school.

Ah, but someone is also being bussed from the better school back to the failing one.

Unless, of course, they pick up and move to a better neighborhood to prevent that from happening.

Thus, bussing leads to even further segregation.

Anonymous said...

The BEST solution would be to ensure that the schools in each neighborhood are doing the job of educating their pupils whatever their ethnic or socioeconomic strata. Busing just wastes everybody's time and creates social tensions that detract from education. What Bernie really was saying was; I want to be able to tell everyone where they should live and where they should go to school, but more importantly I want to "make sure" that the teacher's unions get more money to give to me.

bagoh20 said...

The problem was never the schools. They are just buildings, so what are we really trying to bus kids away from or to? We all know the answer, and since you can't have a conversation about that, we probably should just drop the debate and argue about Chuck anyway. Maybe Chuck could be a subject the moderators ask about at the next debate.

J. Farmer said...

Two good books on the subject are Charles Murray's Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality and Robert Weissberg's Bad Students, Not Bad Schools

exhelodrvr1 said...

How about providing vouchers to parents, and transportation to those who need it. That would accomplish both greater diversity and greater parental choices

Big Mike said...

Important take-away from Harris-Biden exchange is Harris won, Biden lost. Busing was just a handy tool for Harris. It is a non-issue.

@Hammond K. Gritzkofe, we will see whether Trump allows it to be a non-issue.

Mattman26 said...

When Bernie says we can address this through "fair housing legislation," he does not mean (as Ann appears to interpret it) legislation to eradicate discrimination in the housing market (which I'm pretty sure is already illegal, right?).

You can bet your bottom dollar he means something far more social-engineering-y, that will involve moving poor people to live among wealthier people, because, y'know, the only reason those folks live and attend school where they do is because of racism, systemic unfairness, Trump, yada yada yada.

Kevin said...

Democrats 2020: If our economic plans don't scare you, let's talk bussing!

Bay Area Guy said...

Busing was one of those leftwing social experiments that went haywire.

1. Yes, if you're a poor black kid in Watts, it might benefit you to be bussed 1.5 hours to Beverly Hills High.

2. But who are the white kids in Beverly Hills that want to be bussed into Watts to integrate the all-black schools there?

Back to the real world, not Kamala Harris's fantasy world from 50 years ago.

Today, in 2019, the Oakland public schools are mostly a mess. 50% drop-out rate. If you can't even get a high school diploma, you are probably un-marriable, with a very low earning potential for the rest of your life. Might as well be an indentured servant.

But the Dems do appreciate your vote, Serf.

Fritz said...

BleachBit-and-Hammers said...
Every state ranks "49th" in education funding. Well, when election time rolls around.


Thank God for Alabama. Or is it Mississippi?

bagoh20 said...

"Thus, bussing leads to even further segregation."

Ah, yes. Those damned unintended consequences. The left has a special talent for ideas that do that, which would not be a problem if so many non-lefties didn't say: "Yea, that sounds good, and I'm a better person for agreeing with it." Just stop that shit.

Anonymous said...

@ Bleach -bits The problem is that a failing school being a failing school all the kids should be bused out and the school closed. Otherwise how do you decide who gets bussed and who remains in the "concentration camp"?

buwaya said...

But KheSanh,

“Doing the job” begs a host of questions.
What job? To what standard, to what goals?
And it is going to be “unfair” no matter what answers are given to the above.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

KneSanh - Addressing failing schools and what to do with them is another issue. Do we attempt to improve them or merely shut them down? The left do not want a solution because so far the solutions that work are private and or charter schools. The left HATE private and charter, because they cannot control them with their money whore connections with the Teacher's Union.

buwaya said...

A failing school is usually the effect of the kids that are in it.
Sometimes the administration is extremely bad, but that is a different problem.

Students make a school.

Laslo Spatula said...

More busing, less schools.

It would be more cost-effective to just have the kids ride in circles on the bus for seven hours.

No education is better than current education.

I am Laslo.

bagoh20 said...

" If you can't even get a high school diploma, you are probably un-marriable, with a very low earning potential for the rest of your life. Might as well be an indentured servant."

The path then becomes a career of crime, incarceration, and government checks, also known collectively as "other people's money".

Michael K said...

Ah, but someone is also being bussed from the better school back to the failing one.

Unless, of course, they pick up and move to a better neighborhood to prevent that from happening.


Somebody, not me of course, might call that "White Supremacy." The back kids will do better by exposure to whites and whites are superior enough that they will not be harmed by exposure to black schools with plenty of violence.

narciso said...

teaching them to read write and speak correctly, give them a little of their history, and even give them the skills to think, that's why they planted contructivist malware as far back as the 90s,

exhelodrvr1 said...

"A failing school is usually the effect of the kids that are in it."

It's actually the effect of the parents of the kids.

bagoh20 said...

What crazy idea that would have been a campaign killer just a few years ago have the Dems not taken up with great enthusiasm this time? I guess there is still the idea of government provided Jonestown Kool-aide that so far has been ignored, but the season is young.

Michael K said...

To a great degree this is the result of decades of failure in pursuit of the holy grail, that of closing "the gap". Everything has been tried, and nothing has worked, not substantially.

At one time Willie Brown proposed a bill that would have required UC to graduate blacks at the same rate as whites. It was mandating equal outcomes as a matter of law. It would have been interesting to see how it would be implemented. Probably much like what we see now in "Black Studies" majors and the like.

Big Mike said...

It's actually the effect of the parents of the kids.

Once the school board and school administrators let a parent get away with mau-mauing them, the school is a goner.

(To understand the term you can buy Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers using the Althouse Amazon portal.)

Narr said...

What buwaya@1041 said.

Most of my D/lib/leftie friends that have children, send them to private, often church-affiliated schools. Public university academics like myself couldn't afford that; I had a friend who was a big deal at one of the local old-line old-money private prep schools who kept telling me about all the scholarship bucks available for my (high-testing, talented) son but he wouldn't have fit in with the rich kids, and we wouldn't have fit in with the rich parents. Luckily our tour of the place made it blindingly obvious to us--and probably to them.

The public schools here of course had some workarounds for gifted students, so he at least got to attend the flagship public middle and high schools, not too far from where we lived (and in both cases in much better neighborhoods than ours!) We carpooled, just like we did forty years before (on the rare occasions we didn't walk or bike--he NEVER did that).

Narr
He figured out the farce himself

DarkHelmet said...

I think it's probably a bad idea to put kids in industrial-scale institutional educational situations, period. They might be better off staying home and receiving tutoring on their iPads.

Balfegor said...

Re: charter schools and vouchers, the relevant clip from Yes Minister. Everything old is new again.

wildswan said...

exhelodrvr1 said...
How about providing vouchers to parents, and transportation to those who need it. That would accomplish both greater diversity and greater parental choices

Give the parents a choice. If Romney had been elected President he would have done this - it was part of his campaign. If he had won, everyone who wanted to would have been going to a better school. Many more charters, more home-schooling, transportation to better schools. The choice that was made in 2012 did not benefit the black community in terms of schools. The Dems don't care.

Narr said...

John Taylor Gatto. (The late?)

Narr
Around here, we say that Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas exist only to keep Tennessee off the bottom


Kevin said...

Unless, of course, they pick up and move to a better neighborhood to prevent that from happening.

Somebody, not me of course, might call that "White Supremacy."


Oh it can't be. The stream of ultra-left, white Boston parents moving to Brookline and Newton when their kids don't quite test into mostly-white Boston Latin tells me so.

They scream, "Diversity! Diversity! Diversity!" until one day they just pack up and move to the white suburbs.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

The Dems don't care.

@wildswan, I call bullshit -- the Dems do care, but not in the way one might think. They need to keep black people down, uneducated, poor and hopeless, otherwise black people might hit the point where they are paying taxes and not dependent on "free stuff" from Democrat politicians, and it would spell the end of the Democrats as a party.

n.n said...

Integration was originally justified by "peer effects"... Of course, today it would be seen as viciously racist.

Today it is known as the "diversity" doctrine or color judgment, not limited to race, embraced by so-called "woke" people. They manage to overcome the logic of their bigotry under the Pro-Choice quasi-religion ("ethics"). A bad option; but, at least not wicked.

Kevin said...

At one time Willie Brown proposed a bill that would have required UC to graduate blacks at the same rate as whites.

That was after taking them in at the same rate proved not to be the special sauce.

Francisco D said...

Maybe Chuck could be a subject the moderators ask about at the next debate.

Good Lord, no.

This is an interesting topic. I thought busing was an issue that was largely resolved by White Flight in the 60's and 70's.

It seems silly for Kamala Harris to bring it up because it may very well hurt the Democrats in general.

wildswan said...

"Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas exist only to keep Tennessee off the bottom"

In many states in the warmer parts of the country where cotton was once a main crop, all the upper- and many middle-class children are attending "academies" outside the public education system. So those dismal scores people are always laughing at, reflect how well those left behind, are being taught. This group is not the same group at which people think they are laughing.

Fernandinande said...

Charter schools and Catholic schools have a pretty good record at educating kids from any zip code.

No, I don't think so.

These statements are for 4th and 8th grade reading and math:

"After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant. In the second set of analyses, Catholic schools and Lutheran schools were each compared to all public schools. The results, both with and without adjustments, were similar to the corresponding results for all private schools." = no differnce.

"After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.) In the second set, Catholic schools and Lutheran schools were each compared to all public schools. The results, both with and without adjustments, were similar to the corresponding results for all private schools." = Catholic schools worse.

"After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was 7.3 points and significantly different from zero. In the second set, Catholic, Lutheran, and Conservative Christian schools were each compared to all public schools. The results, both with and without adjustments, were generally similar to the corresponding results for all private schools. The only exception was that the average difference in adjusted school mean scores between Conservative Christian schools and all public schools was not significantly different from zero." = some better, some the same as public schools.

"After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was nearly zero and not significant. In the second set, Catholic, Lutheran, and Conservative Christian schools were each compared to all public schools. While the results for Catholic schools, both with and without adjustments, were very similar to the corresponding results for all private schools, the results for the other two types differed...

The average difference in adjusted school means between Conservative Christian schools and all public schools was -7.6 points (i.e., a higher average school mean for public schools) and was significantly different from zero." = Catholic schools the same (as public), some other religious schools worse.

Walter said...

Better than nothing is a high standard.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

National Assessment. Is that government generated?

Anonymous said...

wildswan: So those dismal scores people are always laughing at...This group is not the same group at which people think they are laughing.

One can count on a prog slinking off or crying "squirrel!" when, having smugly thrown up a "haw haw haw conservatards" map, he is countered by some wag with a demographic map of the same area.

hstad said...

I love AA's comment, "....why did Kamala Harris castigate Joe Biden for not supporting it [busing]....?" Because Kamala Harris needs MSM help with her dead campaign so she lied to make the MSM go all jelly in the legs and this is , after all, all about politics. Just look at her comments about desegregation in Berkeley? Harris was born in 1964, the Berkeley school system desegregated in 1963. Moreover, Harris went to school in Canada while only 2 years in the USA. Harris lied! End of story!

Rabel said...

Transcript is wrong.

GS: Does that also mean buses...

BS: Yeah.

00:52 in the video.

buwaya said...

Fer....

Exactly so, this was what put Diane Ravitch off choice, vouchers, etc.
These are on the whole flight schools for the best of the population they are mining.
For reasons other than simple test scores these are good options, but it’s not a cure for “the gap”.

n.n said...

Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling

Cautions in Interpretations


So, they performed a climate study. The value of their conclusion is only as representative as the underlying models. Why not just apply the scientific method in the real world?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

We are all waiting for Chuck Todd(D) to get to the bottom of Kamala's lie.

J. Farmer said...

@wildswan:

So those dismal scores people are always laughing at, reflect how well those left behind, are being taught. This group is not the same group at which people think they are laughing.

I think more often than not that "dismal scores" reflect the intelligence of the population more than "how well...[they] are being taught." The reason the US performs poorly compared to other OECD on standardized testing is because we have large populations of blacks and Hispanics that negatively skew the scores.

narciso said...

it's a complex matrix of elements, more rigorous curriculum, a stronger discipline regimen, as well as family support,


https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/06/28/insinuendo_why_the_muller_report_doth_repeat_so_much_.html

n.n said...

Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling

Among the student characteristics considered were gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, and identification as an English language learner.

In mathematics, the average adjusted school mean for Conservative Christian schools was significantly lower than that of public schools.


Sex, gender, etc. Adjustments for "white privilege"?

buwaya said...

There have been many other studies.
Linear modeling is valid for evaluating actual data.
Regression modeling is also in that category.
CA, in its Republican days, used regression modeling for its own school performance metrics, and a hobby of mine at the time was to analyze their results.

Skippy Tisdale said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling

They're still looking for the "holy grail", even at the cost of nation, state, community, family, and individual. Very climate change-esque in its consensus.

Skippy Tisdale said...

Minneapolis buses kids because of open enrollment. At least a dozen school buses pass by my city bus bus stop in the span f just five minutes. If memory serves, Minneapolis spends about $80 million a year on busing. That's crazy.

MayBee said...

I want to know how the federal government has failed in fair housing legislation.

Because I can tell you, there are lots of laws about fair housing, both federal and state. If you are a realtor and a black person says, "I want to live in a black neighborhood, where should I look?" you cannot tell them. If someone says "I am white and I want to sell my home to another nice white family" you cannot tell them if the person who is making the offer on their home is nice, white, or a family.

hstad said...

Blogger rcocean said...".....BTW, nobody I knows put their kid on a school bus. They're either walk/bike to school or the kids are DRIVEN To school. Or if they are over 16 - they drive themselves. My wife insisted we drive our kids to school, which would have astounded my Mother...."7/1/19, 8:33 AM

With this one comment, you've shown everyone that your ignorance what busing was in the 1970s! "https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-busing-schools-los-angeles-harris-biden-20190628-story.html

Your comment, wherever your where, is not our experience. Our kids had no choice, they where bused period. Consequently, we moved out of the L.A. School district to another County where busing did not exist. The "busing experiment" brought on by our Elites in the Supreme Court was one of the most divisive and worthless "Civil Rights" experiments in history.

J. Farmer said...

@MayBee:

Exactly right. I have my real estate license in Tennessee, and I cannot tell you how much housing discrimination law is drilled into your head.

Loveline on Housing Discrimination PSA

buwaya said...

Adjusted for being white, yes.
Race is a part of any such model.
So white children are compared, directly or indirectly, to other white children, etc.
The CA regressions showed race to be vastly important, much more so than socioeconomic status (SES).
Poor Chinese children tested vastly better than nearly anyone, other than high-SES whites or Asians.

buwaya said...

They are not looking for the holy grail anymore, because by now everyone at least subconsciously understands it is out of reach. That is, a genuine closing of the gap. Hence the loss of any honest goals, replaced by tribal power plays and ideological religion.

Drago said...

J. Farmer: "Integration is the most racist policy imaginable. It basically says to blacks that they cannot have good communities or good schools unless they are in proximity to white people."

I am reminded of an episode of Tony Brown's Journal from the late 70's/early 80's where Tony Brown criticized this idea of black students having to sit next to white students to be successful in learning.

Tony went on to say that if sitting next to better students was the key to getting better performance out of black student, Tony said "Then bus my ass over to Chinatown!".

Mattman26 said...

One of the frequent complaints/excuses you hear is that schools in poorer parts of town are not funded on the level of those in richer parts. I looked into this for Chicago (with its low-performing schools) and its wealthy northern suburbs (uber-high performing). It's a little tricky to do apples-to-apples (suburbs have separate K-8 districts that feed into a unified HS district, while Chicago is K-12), but it was pretty clear that Chicago spends a bit more per pupil.

Need another theory . . . .

Yancey Ward said...

It is interesting, isn't it, that one can get this...

"Stephanopoulos repeated the question, fortunately, and really cornered him"

....when, and only when, the interviewer really wants to take the candidate being questioned down. When the interviewer supports the candidate, it is all softball questions with no followup at all. I applaud Stephanopoulos for this, but can only denigrate him for how and when he actually deploys this sort of tenacity.

stlcdr said...

Sanders: Nothing good ever came from busing.

Kamala: Not true! I was bused!

Sanders: Again, nothing ever good came from busing.

Drago said...

Francisco D: "It seems silly for Kamala Harris to bring it up because it may very well hurt the Democrats in general"

Of course it will hurt the dems.

That's why the word went out to all the lefty-aligned Moby's like LLR Chuck to get out there and deflect this topic to Trump.

Our Antifa-republican Chuck's early thread efforts were precisely along these lines. This is happening on other blog sites as well so we have to assume that there is a concerted effort on the left/LLR-left to rapidly mitigate this lefty-dem self-own which was deployed simply because Kamala wanted to use it to take out Biden.

And now Kamala has layed this mess on the dems....so LLR Chuck and the other hacks spring into action...

Yancey Ward said...

And the "fair housing" shit is just that, shit. Wealthy and/or law-abiding people pay to not be around the lawless underclasses. That is why you have housing segregation, and it is all pretty much voluntary in nature. The only way to fix it is vastly subsidize the poor people to live in wealthy neighborhoods, but even that won't work as the wealthy and law-abiding will just pull up stakes and move away- this is what has always happened if people are free to relocate.

n.n said...

Chicago spends a bit more per pupil.... Need another theory . . . .

Jew privilege... I mean, white privilege... white male privilege. Color and sex. Diversity.

hstad said...

Well my last comment! First 2 comments responded to AA and rcocean. But this responds to the Democratic Party and their candidates. Let's see we now have Democrats in favor of: 1) free health care for all illegal aliens; 2) reparations for slavery; and 3) busing. What's next? The endless "Democratic" search for votes? Stay tuned! Sure doing a good job of chasing most voters toward Trump. Truly amazing how stupid the Democratic campaign direction is moving at this stage.

n.n said...

They are not looking for the holy grail anymore

Au contraire, they found it: Jew... I mean, white... white male privilege. Political leverage gold.

n.n said...

reparations for slavery

Unprecedented human rights campaign with massive sacrifice of blood and treasure. Stand for the Americans who did not kneel.

Michael said...

I pray this will be a key piece of the Dem candidate's policy. Because if there is one thing the deplorables love more than being lectured to is fucking with their kids.

rcocean said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yancey Ward said...

Mike Sylvester with the first comment in this thread pretty much nails it, though- Biden is being hoisted on his own petard. Someone who said "they want to put yall back in chains" got it tossed back in his face by a member of his own party. Now, I thought, like Ms. Althouse, that Biden got the best of Harris in that exchange on the purely intellectual level, but I also realized that meant exactly jackshit as to how it would play politically in the primary race.

Really, busing is ancient history, so Harris can get away with this, and pretty much all the candidates are going to be proclaiming themselves as supporting reparations for slavery, which ended in the US over 150 years ago. I don't think Biden can be saved here, nor do I think Harris can be taken down over that attack.

Fen said...

Yes, if you're a poor black kid in Watts, it might benefit you to be bussed 1.5 hours to Beverly Hills High. But who are the white kids in Beverly Hills that want to be bussed into Watts to integrate the all-black schools there?

And imagine how much this would suck:

"Moving on up, to the sky, we finally got our piece of - ...and now my kids are being bused back to the shithole I just escaped from...@!&&!!"

rcocean said...

truly amazing how stupid the Democratic campaign direction is moving at this stage.

Why is it "Stupid"? You mean because it will lose them the election? That remains to be seen. this country is changing demographically and moving leftward.

rcocean said...

Your comment, wherever your where, is not our experience. Our kids had no choice, they where bused period. Consequently, we moved out of the L.A. School district to another County where busing did not exist. The "busing experiment" brought on by our Elites in the Supreme Court was one of the most divisive and worthless "Civil Rights" experiments in history.

I agree completely. I wish everyone had fought, intelligently, and stopped busing in the 1970s. Unfortunately, only those affected by Busing seemed to care.

And my comment related to my kids school transportation in the 1990s and 2000s - not back in the 70s. Sorry for not making that clear.

Fen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Laslo Spatula said...

It is a waste of time and resources to educate the Soylent Green before you eat the Soylent Green.

I am Laslo.

Fen said...

nor do I think Harris can be taken down over that attack.

Respectfully disagree. Harris needed to prove she can be the American President. Instead, she has shown she will a race-baiting African-American willing to play the race card and forment racial strife when it's convenient to her agenda.

May work well in the primaries, but if I was Team Trump, I would beg her to please not throw me into that briar patch. Make her double down, esp on Reparations and Hands Up Don't Shoot. Show the voters she will give them another 4 year "discussion" about institutional racism and white privilege.

BJM said...

How does Sanders stand on segregated graduations? Or campus dorms and/or communal facilities?

I can't help but contrast my college days when we were protesting and marching to end racial segregation. Now students are encouraged to voluntarily segregate; to what end?

buwaya said...

n.n.,

I mean they have stopped searching for the holy grail honestly.
As in sincerely seeking a real improvement.
There no longer are Sir Gawains, as Coleman was.
It is still useful rhetorically.

Fen said...

Truly amazing how stupid the Democratic campaign direction is moving at this stage.

Why is it "Stupid"? You mean because it will lose them the election? That remains to be seen. this country is changing demographically and moving leftward.

Good point. Are the Democrats actually trying to win the election, or are they trying something else? If you thought Trump was unbeatable, or were afraid of what he would do to your brand, what would you do instead?

Drago said...

hstad: "Sure doing a good job of chasing most voters toward Trump. Truly amazing how stupid the Democratic campaign direction is moving at this stage."

I can't tell you how fun it is watching the LLR's like the fake conservative Bret Stephens and Charlie Sykes and the rest of the Lefty-funded Bulwark "Ahoy" Brigade, fall all over themselves literally begging and pleading for their beloved leftist dems not to go too far over to the left so they (the fake conservative LLR's) can still pretend to support "muh conservative principles" while actually supporting marxist leftists and get away with it.

So. Much. Winning.

rcocean said...

I like Harris, Sanders, and Warren because they are honest Leftists. I'm sick and tired of characters like Joe Biden, who APPEAR moderate, but aren't. Joe Biden had a 100 percent ADA rating in 2007. He's only "moderate" on the Campaign trail. And even if he's not personally extreme left, he's not going to FIGHT the Left. Sure, he'll look after his cronies on Wall Street, but he'll put some more "Wise Latinas" on the SCOTUS and give us National Health Insurance the D congress wants it.

rcocean said...

"I can't tell you how fun it is watching the LLR's like the fake conservative Bret Stephens and Charlie Sykes and the rest of the Lefty-funded Bulwark "Ahoy" Brigade,"

Just wait. By 2020, they'll be making "The Conservative Case for Bernie Sanders"

LOL

Fen said...

'm sick and tired of characters like Joe Biden, who APPEAR moderate, but aren't.

Yup, sometimes being re-elected for FORTY SEVEN years is troubling indicator.

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 269   Newer› Newest»