Thread: Bin Laden Dead
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Re: Bin Laden Dead
Old 05-05-2011, 02:50 PM   #71
KillerGremlin
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Default Re: Bin Laden Dead

Quote:
Originally Posted by Teuthida View Post
And why is an urban environment bad exactly? All of NYC is an urban environment. I've never been to Chicago so perhaps everything is more segregated there? It seems like you have a pretty specific view of city life. It seem to me like a poor community would be much worse off in a more suburban/rural area where their options are limited and there's only one or two schools to a town.

Of course it depends on the teacher more than anything, but the better ones are drawn to better funded schools. I'm looking at ways at fixing the school system. You can't make a kid's father go back home or remove drugs from the streets. You need to think about what you can change.
I may not get a chance to respond to this until after my last few finals and my move back home/graduation. So in case I don't get to this for a few days, you can simply look at Wikipedia. I mean, this is what I found under the article on Chicago Public Schools, this isn't even specifically about their success or lack thereof:

Quote:
The April 21, 2006 issue of the Chicago Tribune revealed a study released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research that stated that 6 of every 100 CPS freshmen would earn a bachelor's degree by age 25. 3 in 100 black or Latino men would earn a bachelor's degree by age 25. The study tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999. 35% of CPS students who went to college earned their bachelor's degree within six years, below the national average of 64%.[2]

Chicago has a history of high dropout rates, with around half of students failing to graduate for the past 30 years. Criticism is directed at the CPS for inflating its performance figures. Through such techniques as counting students who swap schools before dropping out as transfers but not dropouts, it publishes graduation claims as high as 71%. Nonetheless, throughout the 1990s actual rates seem to have improved slightly, as true graduation estimates rose from 48% in 1991 to 54% in 2004.[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago...ls#Performance

I don't have a "pretty specific" view of city life...I have a view of city life since I live in Chicago. I can't generalize to other cities, but I know Chicago is among the worst in the nation if not the worst in terms of public schools. I know Detroit and Minneapolis are right behind (I'm guessing with St. Louis and Indianapolis and all the other main sites that I read about for Teach for America, a program which I no longer look all that positively on), and these are just cities...a lot of these problems extend to rural areas.

I can find more specific articles and studies and I will, but I encourage you to google around. I think your view does not generalize as easily as you think.
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