If you ever wonder what people mean when they use the phrase “word salad”, here’s what they mean:
“There is a predatory dynamic of coming into a district like ours and saying that you are going to resolve something as deep-rooted as racialized inequity through a school that pairs young people with professional opportunities,” Madison School Board member Ali Muldrow said in recent Wisconsin State Journal story.
I know. Gives you a headache just reading it. Let me try to translate.
Muldrow is referring to a proposal for a new charter school in Madison that would focus on preparing students for a career in the trades — plumbing, electrical, carpentry, stuff like that. Careers that pay very well. Careers that give people a sense of pride and accomplishment. Careers that are badly needed as folks in those occupations are aging out.
But Muldrow and most of her fellow board members don’t like this idea because they don’t like charter schools. Any of them. Why? Because when a student attends a charter school in the Madison School District the state money follows the student. In other words, she and her colleagues don’t get to use or control that money. I suppose that’s what she means by a “predatory dynamic,”
Or maybe she means that the school proponents are trying to capitalize on and paper over the community’s concern over “deep-seated racialized inequity” by preparing Black kids for a good job. It just puts off the inevitable fight to the finish in the class struggle.
Or, I don’t know, here’s another theory. Maybe she means that by taking kids out of the Madison schools it prevents them from taking advantage of all the resources that address that deep-seated racialized inequity. Never mind that all that obsession with issues of race has resulted in a yawning — and growing — racial achievement gap. Never mind that Black kids aren’t showing up in those welcoming Madison schools at a rate far higher than their white classmates.
This charter school is the brain child of Boys and Girls Club CEO Michael Johnson, among the most respected Black leaders in Madison. He’s joined in that effort by recently retired Omega School Director Oscar Mireles and Paul Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and the Philadelphia School District.
But Muldrow knows better. I don’t know. It looks to me like there’s a certain predatory dynamic in keeping kids in her schools where they can fail just so she can control the state dollars that follow them.
YSDA stands for:
Free speech.
The rule of law.
Reason.
Tolerance.
Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Substitute “predatory” with “progressive”.
As in real progress.
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“But Muldrow knows better“?
Not exactly, she’s both (IMO) an inveterate liar and a raging hypocrite, (which a…um…concerned citizen points out HERE) and her comfort with both is troubling, to say the least.
To say the most? Muldrow believes in Choice For Me, But Not For Thee; to wit: Muldrow’s “choice” is for her own children to attend the private Isthmus Montessori School.
MONEY QUOTE:
“The inescapably hypocritical irony? Let this sink in: Muldrow is asking voters (Spring 2019) to elect her to a position on the board of the MMSD, an organization she apparently doesn’t even trust with the education of her own children.“
So…she was for choice before she was against it…?
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Heavens to Murgatroyd, can we get this clown to exit, stage left, NOW?
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It’s difficult not to fall in despair looking at MMSD and the Madisonians that unconditionally support it. More than a half a billion dollars to grandiloquently support failure. I wish the new charter school could tap into these funds. One City also.
Underly making it through the primaries deepens the tendency to despair.
Muldrow rivals the Kamala in her massacre of the English language.
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“all that obsession with issues of race has resulted in a yawning — and growing — racial achievement gap.”
Interesting that you believe that discussing racism is itself the cause of the racial achievement gap! Reminds me of the belief that if all those sexual assault victims would stop complaining about it there would be far less rape.
I recently saw a replay of a talk show program from the 1980’s, where the audience members were arguing quite loudly in support of racial segregation in their community, with very demeaning comments about black people being bandied about. I bet a lot of those people raised children to believe the same thing. And they’ve probably grown up to be teachers, elected officials, hiring managers, you name it.
Perhaps it’s the racists themselves who might be to blame for the racial disparities in our country? Because they sure do seem committed to stopping anyone from suggesting that it might be so. As a matter of fact, I think it will soon be illegal to even discuss that possibility in schools.
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I don’t think that discussing racism is the cause of the gap and I certainly didn’t write that. What I clearly wrote is what I meant — despite all the focus on it, things are actually getting worse.
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Despite all the discussion about murder being bad, the murder problem isn’t getting any better either. Perhaps we should stop talking about it? Or, perhaps there’s something about our broader society that we should fix. Same with education.
I’m not happy with urban public schools either, but I don’t think privatization is the answer. How’s our private sector health care system working out for all of us? School choice definitely benefits parents who want to get their kids away from “them”. But the “them” still exist… many historical figures have had approaches for that “problem”…
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“Because they sure do seem committed to stopping anyone from suggesting that it might be so.”
Rollie…buddy…so long as you’re standing a post, ’twill NEVER be thus!
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