As some of you probably know, Williams vs. California is a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU three years ago on behalf of one million California students, who want Gov. Gray Davis to "set minimum standards of school quality."
Nanette Asimov from the San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Lawyers suing the state on behalf of California's low-income students have retained 14 experts from around the country to argue that children who are denied modern textbooks, qualified teachers and other basic resources suffer a permanent disadvantage in life. Lawyers for Gov. Gray Davis have hired 13 other experts who say just the opposite -- that low-income students are unlikely to do any better in school even with the same educational benefits as middle-class students.Davis, who has spent $18 million in public funds for countersuits and housing lawyers in fancy digs, has trotted out Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby, who gives us the following doozy of a statement:
In a section titled "How Important Are Schools in Determining Achievement? How Important Is Parental and Local Involvement?" Hoxby argues that heaping too many benefits into schools can undermine parental influence. "The vast majority of variation in students' achievement is explained not by their schools, but by what their parents do and how much their neighborhood supports education," Hoxby writes. "Parents' and neighborhood effects on students are so great compared to schools' that a policy that decreases parents' or neighborhood effects will almost certainly be harmful overall, even if it improves schools' effect on students."
There's obviously more to this than I can understand, and on the surface, Hoxby's statement isn't exactly disagreeable. But the "minimum standards" that the lawsuit addresses all have to do with food, playgrounds, lighting, bathrooms, teachers, and textbooks -- and arguing that parental influence is greater on children is simply no excuse for substandard conditions.
Read the rest.
Posted by the wily filipino at May 20, 2003 10:34 AM