Slight dip in Wake's graduation rate

Can you prove:

1) Kids who did not drop out = rode a bus three hours (i.e. being bussed increases the graduation rate)?

2) 30 - 60 minutes more bus time does not equal decreased parental involvement? (less bus time = "allows more time to get in trouble" - What do you think they do on the bus sit like angels and/or study? If so,  why do many office referrels come from bus drivers, especially on the 60+ minute routes?)

IMO here's how it works. Certain people have low expections of and believe the economically challenged are not capable of anything except failure and their parents won't be involved anyway, therefore, if there are > 40% of F&R in a school, the school cannot be "healthy" (i.e. the status quo group). They believe that an ED student needs to sit next to an NED student, so the NED student can be their role model because NED = healthy and ED = unhealthy. Thus, they create a policy that reassignments and bussing shall be used such that schools shall have < 40% F&R and they attach the word "diversity" to it to make it sound good. That way if anyone disagrees they can accuse them of being anti-diversity.

Thanks to the 'healthy schools is more important than healthy students' status quo crowd, thousands of F&R students, some as young as five or six, have to get up early for a 60+ minute bus ride during which they not surprisingly at some point misbehave leading to an office referrel. The status quo response is see, see those F&R kids are bad and create unhealthy schools. Additionally, many ED students do not have the same access to pre-school education, reading and vocabulary as their NED peers. Therefore, more of them start school behind their peers and the status quo say see, see. Often the bus is late arriving but the students need their breakfast, so while the NED kids are starting their morning work, the ED kids are still trying to eat, so now they do not have the same amount of school work focus and the status quo say see, see those ED students are academically behind and can't learn and create unhealthy schools. Also, some educators may track them lower. Additionally, as the school is 10 miles away and not on a public transportation route even if their parents wanted to be involved they cannot be, so the status quo say see see those ED parents aren't involved. The ED students do get to sit next to Muffy and Buffy talking about how Mommy and Daddy took them to the Hanna Montana concert at $90 a ticket, naturally making the ED kid feel wonderful about their lot in life. Not surprisingly, those ED students do not develop positive feelings about school, and by HS are ready to drop out and the status quo say see, see told you those kids create unhealthy schools that's why we can't have schools "inundated with 'those' kids" (thanks, Lori Millberg). It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How about instead of automatically accusing those who do not agree that the current assignment policy is the end all be all of being anti-diversity, racist and segregationist, people like yourself 1) stop and think through the bigotry that the current policy is based upon, 2) stop and think about the downsides of the current policy and 3) if you don't believe in these kids or that their communities can ever be better, please just step aside and give people who do believe a chance.

High school students work part time. They drop out when school + homework + long inconvenient commute in and out of school  interfere with work.

Clearly WCPSS has issues with history.  They would probably do better if they'd stop trying to rewrite it.

Good one!

SCHOOLS don't either graduate or not graduate, STUDENTS either graduate or do not graduate.

The focus should be -- on students, not schools.

If Healthy Schools are not linked to measurements like test scores, graduation rates, etc..., then how can anybody recognize a Healthy School?  What is the mechanism for saying "School A is healthy; School B isn't"?

If there is no mechanism, then the phrase is void of any actual meaning -- it's higher-ed jargon, like when lawyers use latin, intended to communicate "I know more about this than you do, so trust me and don't ask questions."