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Elementary Ed in a University Town
Dublin Core
Title
Elementary Ed in a University Town
Subject
Secondary,Primary,elementary discrimination
Description
The article talks about the value of the special needs program that is being cut in Champaign-Urbana.
Article text (with comments):
*
Elementary Ed in a University Town
By Oronte March 28, 2008 11:56 pm EDT
Champaign-Urbana is not a small town, though it’s often thought of as one. It’s actually two cities, of course, with separate governments. Urbana is the county seat and address of America’s 14th-largest campus; Champaign is home to the second-largest food manufacturing plant in the world, a 1.6-million square foot Kraft facility that makes enough processed American cheese slices in a year to “stretch from Champaign to the moon."
Population sums run as high as 210,000, but that’s certainly taking into account surrounding communities and probably the transient student population too. In any case, something has changed in our shared demography recently, or at least in corporate attitudes to our demographic worth: We only just got Starbucks, Potbelly Sandwich Works, Cold Stone Creamery, and other businesses well above Hardee’s/IHOP/Arby’s in the food chain.
Together we have the crime of a medium-sized city, though the relative data can be crunched many ways, and an apparent gap between rich and poor. On the busy road north to the big box stores and the better mall, kids from the lower-income neighborhood walk across five lanes of traffic nonchalantly, slowly, fatalistically, as if daring drivers to take anything else from them.
One of the most noticeable problems of (especially) Champaign’s size is its schools. Education being the cornerstone of citizenship and all, I’m sorry to admit that before parenthood I simply paid my taxes and assumed public school issues would work themselves out. But necessity puts the spur to apathy, and now that Starbuck is five and nearly done with Montessori kindergarten, I’ve started paying attention. As Mrs. Churm pointed out to me, the schools of Champaign are funded just by Champaign’s taxes, with the odd result that instead of being uniformly good or bad—the way of many individual Chicagoland suburbs, where she grew up—the Champaign school district looks like a microcosm of a much larger city’s, such as Chicago’s. I suppose I thought the university’s presence and resources would somehow moderate disparity the way a large body of water moderates temperatures onshore.
Many university employees own homes in a small area of Urbana known by the weirdly inverted nickname “the faculty ghetto.†When my wife and I mention to other parents that our house—bought before we had children—is on the fringe of that area, they sigh, Ohh, as if we have no worries. If nothing else, many parents with advanced degrees get deeply involved at the elementary school where Starbuck will go. But there is a kind of educated-elite flight in process. Professionals and businesspeople of all stripes have been buying big homes across town, in Champaign, where taxes are lower and plywood McHousing is still being thrown up on bare tracts among the corn despite the economy. (If the film Field of Dreams taught us nothing else, it’s that corn stands for Death.) Their tradeoff is schooling.
Everyone (but me) seems to know the names of the best primary school in town (private tuition is $1,000 more per year than at the university), the worst, and the reputations of the 16 between them. Unsurprisingly, African American and Hispanic neighborhoods have fared the worst, and a lawsuit against the Champaign school district resulted in a consent decree that aims “to improve the academic performance of the district's black students, and it mandates the district to eliminate unwarranted disparities between black and white students in participation in gifted classes, assignment to special education, discipline and attendance, among other things.†A Schools of Choice program now assigns kids to schools based on “parent choice, building capacity, racial balance, availability of special programs, presence of siblings in the school, and proximity preference.†This has led to further unease and violations of the decree.
An outreach program called the Chancellor’s Academy, hosted by UIUC’s College of Ed, was started in 2005 to offer professional development training to area educators to try to level the field. Last year 80 local teachers and 40 administrators attended the two-week program. “Funding,†the Illinois News Bureau reports, “comes from the Illinois campus, which pays for faculty time, books and supplies, and a $500 stipend for each participating teacher. The school districts provide staff to assist with planning, as well as release time for teachers to attend training activities during the school year.â€
I don’t know how results will be measured, but one hopes that the 8th-best public university in the country, with a 1.5-billion dollar endowment, will be able to do something for its community, if only for the uni’s best interests (think faculty recruitment). A psychogeographical map of all this—needs, interests, funding, population, abilities, compassion, stories—would be fascinating, especially if it had an overlay of the university’s influence (for better and worse) on our little town.
Go to comments (4) »
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Comments on Elementary Ed in a University Town
* Posted by Orwell on March 31, 2008 at 9:55am EDT
*
First, send Starbuck to Caprica to study with Apollo. Or should Starbuck study at a Starbucks?
Second, please be so good as to explain "unwarranted disparities" from the warranted type, or is this merely more wishful utopian thinking that every child is an identical commodity despite his or her nature and nuture?
* Orwell
* Posted by Oronte Churm on March 31, 2008 at 1:05pm EDT
*
How marvelous! My first troll, after 16 months of blogging. And with a Battlestar Galactica citation yet. Where you been, Orwell?
I don't have to explain "unwarranted disparities," since I didn't say it. That's what quotations marks mean. As far as "nurture" goes, isn't that the issue--who gets nurtured? And since much of this is based in race, are you sure you want to argue about "nature"?
* Posted by Orwell on April 1, 2008 at 9:30am EDT
*
I have been a regular reader for some time, but I'm the laconic type.
It is not that I'm ignorant of the Pequod, but sending young Starbuck to sea went out with the nineteenth century.
As for "unwarranted disparities" I did not attribute it to you, but was asking for your take on educationalist doublespeak. I'm of a mind that children have a nature - an individual nature - and that such gross taxonomies as black and white are better left to the David Dukes and Reverend Wrights.
Being laconic my ration of words is used up.
* Posted by Oronte on April 1, 2008 at 11:55am EDT
*
Fair enough, Orwell. Say, how'd you get your laconic gig? I could use me some of that.
Article text (with comments):
*
Elementary Ed in a University Town
By Oronte March 28, 2008 11:56 pm EDT
Champaign-Urbana is not a small town, though it’s often thought of as one. It’s actually two cities, of course, with separate governments. Urbana is the county seat and address of America’s 14th-largest campus; Champaign is home to the second-largest food manufacturing plant in the world, a 1.6-million square foot Kraft facility that makes enough processed American cheese slices in a year to “stretch from Champaign to the moon."
Population sums run as high as 210,000, but that’s certainly taking into account surrounding communities and probably the transient student population too. In any case, something has changed in our shared demography recently, or at least in corporate attitudes to our demographic worth: We only just got Starbucks, Potbelly Sandwich Works, Cold Stone Creamery, and other businesses well above Hardee’s/IHOP/Arby’s in the food chain.
Together we have the crime of a medium-sized city, though the relative data can be crunched many ways, and an apparent gap between rich and poor. On the busy road north to the big box stores and the better mall, kids from the lower-income neighborhood walk across five lanes of traffic nonchalantly, slowly, fatalistically, as if daring drivers to take anything else from them.
One of the most noticeable problems of (especially) Champaign’s size is its schools. Education being the cornerstone of citizenship and all, I’m sorry to admit that before parenthood I simply paid my taxes and assumed public school issues would work themselves out. But necessity puts the spur to apathy, and now that Starbuck is five and nearly done with Montessori kindergarten, I’ve started paying attention. As Mrs. Churm pointed out to me, the schools of Champaign are funded just by Champaign’s taxes, with the odd result that instead of being uniformly good or bad—the way of many individual Chicagoland suburbs, where she grew up—the Champaign school district looks like a microcosm of a much larger city’s, such as Chicago’s. I suppose I thought the university’s presence and resources would somehow moderate disparity the way a large body of water moderates temperatures onshore.
Many university employees own homes in a small area of Urbana known by the weirdly inverted nickname “the faculty ghetto.†When my wife and I mention to other parents that our house—bought before we had children—is on the fringe of that area, they sigh, Ohh, as if we have no worries. If nothing else, many parents with advanced degrees get deeply involved at the elementary school where Starbuck will go. But there is a kind of educated-elite flight in process. Professionals and businesspeople of all stripes have been buying big homes across town, in Champaign, where taxes are lower and plywood McHousing is still being thrown up on bare tracts among the corn despite the economy. (If the film Field of Dreams taught us nothing else, it’s that corn stands for Death.) Their tradeoff is schooling.
Everyone (but me) seems to know the names of the best primary school in town (private tuition is $1,000 more per year than at the university), the worst, and the reputations of the 16 between them. Unsurprisingly, African American and Hispanic neighborhoods have fared the worst, and a lawsuit against the Champaign school district resulted in a consent decree that aims “to improve the academic performance of the district's black students, and it mandates the district to eliminate unwarranted disparities between black and white students in participation in gifted classes, assignment to special education, discipline and attendance, among other things.†A Schools of Choice program now assigns kids to schools based on “parent choice, building capacity, racial balance, availability of special programs, presence of siblings in the school, and proximity preference.†This has led to further unease and violations of the decree.
An outreach program called the Chancellor’s Academy, hosted by UIUC’s College of Ed, was started in 2005 to offer professional development training to area educators to try to level the field. Last year 80 local teachers and 40 administrators attended the two-week program. “Funding,†the Illinois News Bureau reports, “comes from the Illinois campus, which pays for faculty time, books and supplies, and a $500 stipend for each participating teacher. The school districts provide staff to assist with planning, as well as release time for teachers to attend training activities during the school year.â€
I don’t know how results will be measured, but one hopes that the 8th-best public university in the country, with a 1.5-billion dollar endowment, will be able to do something for its community, if only for the uni’s best interests (think faculty recruitment). A psychogeographical map of all this—needs, interests, funding, population, abilities, compassion, stories—would be fascinating, especially if it had an overlay of the university’s influence (for better and worse) on our little town.
Go to comments (4) »
Advertisement
Previous posts
* My Other Stuff
* March 26, 2008 10:19 am EDT
* The Rest of Spring Break
* March 21, 2008 3:34 pm EDT
* Spring Break
* March 19, 2008 8:03 pm EDT
* Little Truths Contest Winners
* March 14, 2008 12:15 am EDT
* Evaluating Writing
* March 12, 2008 7:08 pm EDT
* Contest Extension
* March 4, 2008 12:21 am EST
* The Opening Hours of Unofficial St. Pat's
* March 3, 2008 12:44 am EST
* Contest Reminder
* March 1, 2008 10:21 am EST
* To The Students at Unofficial St. Pat's
* February 29, 2008 11:21 am EST
* Guest Post: B.R. Cohen
* February 27, 2008 12:56 am EST
Search now. Get hired.
Enter Keyword(s):
Post a Job
Comments on Elementary Ed in a University Town
* Posted by Orwell on March 31, 2008 at 9:55am EDT
*
First, send Starbuck to Caprica to study with Apollo. Or should Starbuck study at a Starbucks?
Second, please be so good as to explain "unwarranted disparities" from the warranted type, or is this merely more wishful utopian thinking that every child is an identical commodity despite his or her nature and nuture?
* Orwell
* Posted by Oronte Churm on March 31, 2008 at 1:05pm EDT
*
How marvelous! My first troll, after 16 months of blogging. And with a Battlestar Galactica citation yet. Where you been, Orwell?
I don't have to explain "unwarranted disparities," since I didn't say it. That's what quotations marks mean. As far as "nurture" goes, isn't that the issue--who gets nurtured? And since much of this is based in race, are you sure you want to argue about "nature"?
* Posted by Orwell on April 1, 2008 at 9:30am EDT
*
I have been a regular reader for some time, but I'm the laconic type.
It is not that I'm ignorant of the Pequod, but sending young Starbuck to sea went out with the nineteenth century.
As for "unwarranted disparities" I did not attribute it to you, but was asking for your take on educationalist doublespeak. I'm of a mind that children have a nature - an individual nature - and that such gross taxonomies as black and white are better left to the David Dukes and Reverend Wrights.
Being laconic my ration of words is used up.
* Posted by Oronte on April 1, 2008 at 11:55am EDT
*
Fair enough, Orwell. Say, how'd you get your laconic gig? I could use me some of that.
Creator
Oronte
Publisher
Blog U
Date
28 March 2008
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http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/the_education_of_oronte_churm/elementary_ed_in_a_university_town
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Citation
Oronte, "Elementary Ed in a University Town," in eBlack Champaign-Urbana, Item #411, https://eblackcu.net/portal/items/show/411 (accessed December 23, 2024).
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